“It’s not there.”
Annie Castell said, “She must have come back for it. Sit down and have your supper.”
CHAPTER 13
Miss Silver looked about her at the room which Captain Taverner was so kindly relinquishing.
“Very comfortable,” she said-“and most good of you. Mrs. Duke next door, and then Miss Mildred Taverner, you say? And Lady Marian and her husband opposite?”
Jeremy said, “Not quite. It’s Jane who is just over the way from you, and the Enningtons beyond her. The bathroom’s on Jane’s other side.”
“So very convenient. You are really too kind. These old houses are sometimes so confusing. There are some more bedrooms, are there not, across the landing?”
Jeremy wondered why elderly ladies took so much interest in other people’s affairs. He said,
“Yes. Mr. Taverner’s over there, and Geoffrey, and I suppose the Castells, and that girl Eily.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“And Mr. Miller?”
Jeremy was packing his bag. Jane was sitting on the end of the bed. She wrinkled her nose and said,
“Thank goodness, no! He’s gone.”
Jeremy turned round with a shaving-brush in his hand.
“How do you know?”
“Eily told me. He was-well, you saw what he was-and just to keep him quiet, that wretched Castell wanted Eily to come and see him, and she wouldn’t. She had already had a scene with Luke White, and Al was the last straw. She ran out of the room in the end, and a little while after Fogarty told her he’d gone home.”
Miss Silver put her head on one side like a bird and repeated the last word in an interrogative manner.
“Home?”
“Ledlington. He’s a porter at the station-I told you. He’s got a room in some back street.”
Jeremy reached for his pyjamas and pushed them down on the top of his shaving tackle.
“Long odds against his making it. Drunk and incapable in a ditch would be the form, I should think. As a matter of fact I saw him go, and if he doesn’t sober up, I shouldn’t think he’d get half a mile. He was still singing ‘Eileen alannah.’ ”
Jane said, “It’s nonsense Eily staying here. She ought to marry John Higgins and get out of it.” She turned to Miss Silver. “He’s another of the cousins, but he won’t come here. Perhaps he’s afraid of not being able to turn the other cheek to Luke White. He’s a sort of local preacher when he isn’t being Sir John Layburn’s head carpenter. Eily and he are in love, and he’d make her an awfully good husband. Quite a nice change after Luke and Al.”
Jeremy picked up his case.
“I’ve plumped for the room half way down the stairs.” He took Jane by the wrist and pulled her up. “If you’re good, you can come and help me unpack. Good-night, Miss Silver.”
They went down the short flight to the room where they had talked before dinner. A bed had been made up on the deep old-fashioned couch. It really looked very comfortable.
Jeremy shut the door, and said with frowning intensity,
“Why on earth are you spreading yourself like that?”
“Why on earth was I spreading myself like what?”
“Like you were to Miss Silver.”
“I wasn’t!”
He said contemptuously,
“Of course you were! I want to know why.”
Jane softened. She had been looking rather haughtily at a point just above his head. She now allowed her eyes to meet his for a moment, then looked down and said in a tentative manner,
“Jeremy-”
“Well?”
“There’s something-and I don’t know whether to tell you-” She paused, and added thoughtfully, “or not.”
Jeremy threw his bag on to the couch. He turned back to say,
“Look here, what’s all this?”
“Well, perhaps it’s nothing-”
“All right, if it’s nothing, you’d better go to bed.”
“No-I’ll tell you. It’s only-you know I met Miss Silver at Mrs. Moray’s, and I thought just what anyone would think, that she was a sort of Edwardian specimen governess and really ought to be under a glass case in the British Museum or somewhere, but rather a lamb, and we’d been getting on like a house on fire.”
“Darling, is all this going to get us anywhere? Or shall I just go quietly off to sleep until you arrive at the point?”
“I have arrived at it. That’s what she seemed like, and that’s what I thought she was. But she isn’t. At least she is really. That’s why it’s so convincing. I mean, she used to be a governess and all that sort of thing, so it’s the most marvellous protective colouring-like insects pretending to be sticks-”
“Jane, you’re raving!”
“No, darling, I’m only leading up to it gently.”
“Leading up to what?”
She gave a little gurgle of laughter, put her lips quite close to his ear, and said,
“She’s a detective.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“No-really. Mrs. Moray said she was marvellous. Charles said so too-they both did. They said the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard thought no end of her.”
“You’re not spoofing?”
She said indignantly, “As if I would!”
“You might. Then-”
They looked at each other. Jane nodded.
“I know-that’s what I’ve been thinking-about her being here. It might be accidental like she said, or it mightn’t. She might be detecting.”
Jeremy said in an exasperated tone,
“I told you there was something fishy about this place. You oughtn’t to have come.”
“The theme song!” She blew him a kiss. “So I thought if there is any dirty work going on, she might just as well know which of us is which and have some sort of an idea of the lay-out. Because-well, I didn’t tell you about Luke White, did I?”
She proceeded to do so, finishing up with, “It really was horrid. And don’t keep saying I oughtn’t to have come, because that’s nonsense. It’s Eily I’m thinking about. You could see what a shock she’d had. You know, really it isn’t civilized to go round throwing your weight about saying you’ll cut people’s hearts out and drench them with blood if they marry somebody else.”
Jeremy said, “Not very,” in rather an odd tone of voice.
Then he tipped Jane’s chin up and kissed her in a good hard kind of way. It was agreeable, but undermining. It was still more undermining when he said in a different voice,
“Let’s get married soon.”
Jane didn’t want to be undermined, but she felt it coming on. She hadn’t ever realized before how dreadfully easy it would be to say yes. She kissed him back once, and pulled away. And ran out of the room.
CHAPTER 14
Everyone began to go to bed. The downstairs rooms were left to darkness and silence except for the glimmer of a wall-lamp in the small square hall. Old houses settle slowly to their rest. Floors upon which many generations have walked, furniture which has been a very long time in use, walls which have borne the stress and weight of old beams for centuries, have a way of lapsing into silence by degrees. There are small rustling sounds, creakings, movements-a whispering at the keyhole of a door, a stirring amongst spent ashes of a fire, a sighing in the chimney-and all in the darkness which has been there night after night for perhaps three hundred years. Thoughts, feelings, actions which have left their impress come to the surface. The life of today no longer dominates these empty rooms. The past comes stealing back.
Upstairs Miss Silver braided her hair and pinned it up neatly for the night. She had spent a very instructive evening. She folded her crimson dressing-gown, made in the last year of the war from utility cloth but most warm and comfortable and ornamented with the handmade crochet lace which was practically indestructible and had already served two previous gowns. Her slippers were new, a present from her nephew’s wife Dorothy, who had brought them home from
the East. So very kind, and just the right shade of red. They had black pompoms on the toes, and of course these would not wear so well as the slippers but could be replaced. She arranged them neatly side by side before getting into bed, after which she put on a warm blue shawl with an openwork border over her long-sleeved woollen nightdress, and read a chapter from the Bible before blowing out the candle and composing herself to sleep.
Mildred Taverner also wore a long-sleeved nightgown of a woolly nature. She had embroidered a spidery bunch of flowers on either side of the front opening, which she had trimmed with little ruches of lace. She lay in the dark and wished that she had drunk less champagne. The bed really was not steady at all, and she felt far from well. She tried to remember what she had said to Jacob Taverner.
In the big double bed over the way Freddy Thorpe-Ennington could just hear his wife’s voice going on and on. He wasn’t asleep, because he could hear Marian talking, and he wasn’t awake, because he wouldn’t have been able to answer her even if he had wanted to. He didn’t want to. He wanted her to stop talking and put out the light, which hurt his eyes. He wasn’t drunk-he had walked upstairs, hadn’t he? All he wanted was to go to sleep. Why couldn’t Marian let him alone and put out the light? He wished she would stop talking, because every now and then he couldn’t help hearing what she said. She said things like, “Freddy, my sweet, you know you really shouldn’t drink so much,” and, “You’ll feel rotten tomorrow-you know you will.” He didn’t want to hear what anyone said. He wanted to go to sleep.
Marian Thorpe-Ennington finished creaming her face and put on the chin-strap which she wore at night though it was really dreadfully uncomfortable, tied a cap over her hair to preserve the waves, and slipped her hands into soft wash-leather gloves. When she had done all this she took off the cape which she had been wearing to protect her nightgown. It was worth protecting-white triple ninon smocked at the shoulders and at the waist in a delicate apple-green. She put on the matching apple-green coatee and took a casual look at herself in the glass. The chin-strap rather spoilt the effect, but anyhow you had to cream your face, and it wasn’t as if there was anyone to see you. Freddy, poor sweet, never knew how you looked or what you had on.
This happened to be true, because having once made up his mind that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he remained in that simple belief, and nothing she did or omitted to do had the slightest effect upon it.
Marian Thorpe-Ennington gave a fleeting sigh of regret to the days when her complexion owed its astounding brilliance to her own youth and to the soft water and softer airs of Rathlea and when she didn’t have to bother about a double chin. Then she got into bed, kissed the back of Freddy’s head, and blew out the candle.
On the other side of the landing Geoffrey Taverner was reading in bed. He wore neat grey pyjamas, and a grey dressing-gown edged with a black and white cord. He had only two pillows and he had been at some pains to arrange them comfortably. He wore pale horn-rimmed glasses. He was reading a thriller with the intriguing title of Three Corpses and a Coffin.
In the room next to Miss Silver Florence Duke hadn’t undressed. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. There was a lighted candle on the chest of drawers which served for a dressing-table. The flame moved in the draught from the window. It made the candle gutter. The flame, the guttering wax, and the candle itself were reflected in the tilted glass. There were two wavering tongues of fire, two little caves running with melted wax, two candles thickened with what old wives’ tales call winding-sheets. Florence Duke stared past them at the wall.
Jane felt the air come in cold and salt from the sea. It hadn’t taken her five minutes to undress. Now she was here in the dark with the wind blowing in, a wind from a long way off. She lay in the dark and watched the oblong of the window form upon the darkness until it hung there like a picture in a frame. The frame was there, but the picture was all a soft blur of grey, without form and void. That was in the Bible, in Genesis. Her thoughts began to drift. Under the drifting thoughts she was warm and happy. Jeremy had kissed her as if he loved her-very much. Cousins oughtn’t to marry-perhaps it wouldn’t matter if they did-perhaps-
She came awake with a start. There was a soft knocking on her door, and then the door opening, the wind rushing through, and Eily’s voice saying,
“Miss Heron-please-”
Jane sat up. The door shut, the wind stopped rushing. She said,
“What is it? Look here, shut the window, and I’ll light a candle.”
The window closed, and at once the room felt still. The curtains came together, and by the candle-light Jane saw Eily in her blue dress. She had some things gathered up in her arm, a nightgown, a dressing-gown. She stood half way between the window and the bed, catching her breath, her eyes fixed on Jane’s face, her own as white as milk.
Jane said, “What is it?” again.
Eily came up close.
“Miss Heron-if you’d let me stop here-I’d sit in the chair and not make a sound.”
“What is it?”
Eily said in a shaken voice,
“There’s no key in my door.”
“Do you mean there isn’t one ever, or there isn’t one now?”
The shaken voice sank low.
“It’s gone. Aunt Annie told me to lock my door. She didn’t need to say so-I’ve always locked it-since that Luke’s been here. But tonight there’s no key-it’s gone.”
“You must tell your aunt.”
“I can’t-they’re in the one room together, she and Uncle. If you’ll let me stay-”
“Of course you can stay. Get your things off and get into bed! It’s big enough for half a dozen.”
Eily caught her breath.
“I didn’t mean that-or to trouble you-only to stay in the room. He said to ask you.”
Jane took her up quickly.
“He? Who?”
“It was John, Miss Heron-John Higgins.”
“When?”
“Miss Heron, you’ll not tell? There’s no harm, but you’ll not tell? There’s once in a while he’ll come out here and go by whistling to let me know he’s there. It’s a hymn tune he whistles-Greenland’s Icy Mountains-and I’ll look out of my window, and he’ll say, ‘Are you all right, Eily?’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes.’ But tonight-oh dear, he was in a way!”
“Why?”
Eily shrank.
“You know what happened up here tonight with that Luke. I went down and I told my Aunt Annie. Mrs. Bridling that comes in to help when we’re busy, she’d finished up and gone home, and I was putting away the silver. I didn’t know there was anyone there. But Mrs. Bridling came back. She’d left her scarf, and she came back for it, and she heard what I said when I thought it was just Aunt Annie and me, the two of us alone.”
“How do you know?”
Eily sat down on the edge of the bed. It was just as if she couldn’t hold herself up any more. There seemed to be the weight of the world on her. She went on telling Jane about Mrs. Bridling.
“She went right back to Cliff and saw to Mr. Bridling-he’s in his bed and can’t get out of it. Then she began to think about what she’d heard me tell Aunt Annie, and when she’d thought about it for a bit she went along next door and told John Higgins, and John came out here right away. I’ve never seen him in such a taking.”
“I don’t wonder. Eily, why don’t you marry him like he wants you to? He does, doesn’t he?”
Eily looked at her, a long mournful look.
“And have his blood on me the way Luke said?” She shook her head. “I’d rather jump off the cliff-I told him so tonight.”
“And what did he say to that?”
Eily’s voice went lower still.
“He said I’d lose my soul and go to hell, and he said he’d come after me-there or anywhere. And he said, ‘God forgive me, but it’s true.’ I’ve never seen him like it before. What’s the matter with men, Miss Heron, to get worked up about a girl the way they
do? There’s Al, and Luke, and even John-what gets into them at all?”
Jane bit her lip. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. She remembered Jeremy kissing her that hard way.
Eily went on in her pretty grieving voice.
“He wanted me to come out by the side door. He said he’d take me out to Mrs. Bridling and we could be married in three days. And I said I couldn’t leave Aunt Annie. You’d never think he’d carry on the way he did. I just said no, and no, and no, and at the last of it he said would I give my solemn promise I’d go along to your room and ask you to let me stay, and he’d come out in the morning and talk to Uncle, so I said I would-” Her voice trailed away.
CHAPTER 15
Eily slipped in on the far side of the big bed and felt warmth and safety close round her. She said, “Thank you, Miss Heron,” on a soft breath, and heard a laugh from the neighbouring pillow.
“Oh, drop the Miss Heron! We’ll be cousins when you marry John Higgins.”
Jane lay there thinking how odd it all was. She knew the moment when Eily fell asleep, but she herself was broad awake. If you scare your first sleep away, it doesn’t readily come back. Her mind went over all the things that had happened since they came to the Catherine-Wheel-the old house, the dark passage to the shore, Al Miller’s drunken laugh, Eily, Luke White nursing a bleeding hand, Jeremy kissing her in the little room half way down the stairs. They came back as thoughts, but the thoughts changed to pictures, and the pictures went with her over the edge of sleep. In the last of them she was out of bed standing at the door of the room. The door was open. She looked into the passage, and it was empty-empty and dark. But there was a light at the end where the stair went down. She went along as far as the landing and looked over the stair. The door of the little room half way down was open and someone was coming out. It was Jeremy. That is what she thought when she saw him. And then she wasn’t sure. His hair was much longer, and he looked so ill. He had on a big loose coat and a high dark stock. His hands were pressed hard against his side, the blood ran between his fingers. It wasn’t Jeremy- it couldn’t be Jeremy. He came out of the room and looked up at her standing there. She knew that he was going to die. She screamed, and the scream waked her.
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