The Key (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 8)

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Yes—here it is. I was lucky—a friend hid it for me—and some clothes, or I should be in rags, and one would rather not come back from the grave in rags.”

  Miss Marsh’s pale eyes stared. She said nervously,

  “I think I had better ask Miss Clutterbuck.” She slipped down from her chair and vanished.

  About ten minutes later Anne emerged into the street. She had filled in a form, she had been given an emergency card for a fortnight, and the old identity card to keep until such time as a new one should be issued.

  She crossed the road and entered a telephone-box.

  Two

  MRS. ARMITAGE LOOKED up from the Air Force pullover she was knitting and immediately dropped a stitch. She was large, fair, and extremely good natured. She wore aged tweeds and a battered felt hat which was generally over one ear. A spare knitting-needle of a horribly bright pink was thrust into a thick disordered fuzz of hair. Once almost too golden, it was now in a streaky half-way stage which probably went better with the freckled skin, light eyes, and wide genial mouth. The tweeds were, or had been, a regrettable mustard. She would have been the first to admit that they clashed with the room. It would have been quite in character if she had said, “But just think of a room that wouldn’t clash with me!”

  This particular room had been decorated for Anne Jocelyn when she married. It was pretty, conventional, and eminently suitable for a bride of twenty, with its flowery chintzes, blue curtains, and old china. The Four Seasons stood in graceful poses on the white mantelshelf. In a corner cupboard the bright colour of a tea-set in bleu-de-roi caught up and repeated the shade of the curtains. The mustard-coloured tweeds were certainly a mistake, and she was as certainly quite unperturbed about it.

  Mrs. Armitage leaned towards her niece Lyndall, who was sitting on the hearth-rug dropping fir cones on a reluctant fire, and said in her usual irrelevant manner,

  “There’s one good thing about the war anyway—if we had to sit in that awful purse-proud drawing-room I should want to scream, like the girls who wrote to the Daily Mirror the other day.”

  Lyn wrinkled her nose and said, “What girls?”

  Mrs. Armitage dragged the knitting-needle from her hair.

  “Three of them,” she said. “They were bored with their job, and they said they wanted to scream every so often. Well, I should if I had to sit in a room with seven chandeliers and about fifty mirrors.”

  Lyndall blew a kiss.

  “Only six, darling—I counted them yesterday—and three chandeliers. And I quite agree, but why purse-proud?”

  “Because Sir Ambrose Jocelyn, who was Anne’s grandfather and Philip’s great-uncle, built it on with his wife’s money. I expect he did it to annoy her—they didn’t get on, you know. She left him, but he managed to build the drawing-room and that awful north wing first, and I suppose she felt she just couldn’t bear it and cleared out before he spent it all, or there wouldn’t have been anything left to come down to Anne, and Philip would have to sell Jocelyn’s Holt. So it’s all for the best. Oh, lord—I’ve dropped a stitch!”

  Lyn giggled. She was a little thing, slim and pale, with rather nice grey eyes and a lot of soft dark hair in a bush of curls. She reached for the pullover.

  “Two, darling. You shouldn’t take your eye off the ball. Better give it to me.”

  “No—I’ll pick them up myself—can if I put my mind to it. Yes, I suppose it was lucky for Philip that Anne and the money were there. Of course people aren’t keen on cousins marrying now. Funny how fashions change, because in the Victorian novels it was quite the thing—even firsts, which is a bit too near. Anne and Philip were only seconds, and as he came into the title and the place, and she had the money to keep them up, everybody said it couldn’t have been better—except that I don’t know how they would have got on if it had lasted, because of course Anne—well, Anne—” Her voice trailed away. She pursued the lost stitches.

  Lyndall’s colour rose.

  “Anne was sweet,” she said, her voice quick and warm.

  Mrs. Armitage coerced a stitch into its place on the pink needle and said vaguely,

  “Oh, yes. Anne was sweet.”

  Lyn’s colour brightened.

  “She was!”

  “Oh, yes, my dear.” The light eyes blinked. “Of course I remember you had a—what do you call it—a crush on her when you were a schoolgirl, didn’t you? I had forgotten. But you didn’t see much of her after that—did you?”

  Lyndall shook her head.

  “Only at the wedding. But I’ve never forgotten the summer holidays the year before the war, when Anne and her aunt were here on a visit. I’ve often thought since how easy it would have been for Anne to be horrid about it. You see, there was you and Mrs. Kendal, and Philip and Anne. Anne was nineteen and quite grown up, and I was only sixteen and a horrid little scrub. I must have been an awful nuisance, but Anne was wonderful. Lots of girls would have been horrid and high-hat, and not wanting to be bothered with a flapper, but she was wonderful. She took me everywhere and let me do everything with them. She was sweet. And if Philip didn’t get on with her after they were married, it must have been his fault.”

  Mildred Armitage looked across her dishevelled knitting.

  They both liked their own way,” she said. “They were both only children, and Anne was very pretty, and she had a lot of money, and she hadn’t found out that it’s not all jam holding the purse-strings when you’re married to anyone as proud as Philip.”

  Lyn’s eyes came to her face with a wondering look.

  “Is Philip proud?”

  “Oh, my dear—proud!”

  “Well, is he?”

  Mrs. Armitage shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well, well—” she said. “Anyhow there wasn’t a great deal of time for things to go wrong, was there? And perhaps they wouldn’t have gone wrong at all—or perhaps they would have gone wrong and come right again. It’s no use worrying about it now—she’s gone, and there it is. You can think about her as kindly as you like.”

  “She was wonderful to me.” The three times repeated phrase had the effect of a response in some private litany of loyalty and regret. “It was lovely of her to have me for a bridesmaid.”

  She got up and went back to the middle of the room, tilting her head and looking up at the full-length painting over the mantelpiece. It was Amory’s famous Girl with a Fur Coat, and it had been painted from Anne Jocelyn a few weeks after her marriage. Soft dark fur over a thin blue dress, pearls hanging down, a smiling oval face and rosy lips, gold-tinted hair in a cluster of careless curls, the soft bloom of youth and happiness. Anne Jocelyn looked out of the picture as if she was alive. A young girl, bare-headed, drawing her coat about her, smiling as if she was just starting off for a party—smiling at all the pleasant things that were to come. And a year later she had died in the dark on a Breton beach to the rattle of machine-gun fire.

  Lyndall’s eyes widened. She went on looking at the picture, all its colours bright under the electric light. Anne’s room—Anne’s picture. And Anne dead at twenty-one! The anger in her leapt up. She turned on Mildred Armitage.

  “Why weren’t you fond of her?”

  The knitting sank in a heap on the mustard-coloured lap. The pale eyes blinked as if with surprise.

  “My darling child, I hardly knew her. Anne’s mother didn’t cotton to the Jocelyns very much. You’ve got to remember that Marian was old Ambrose’s daughter and she was brought up to look upon him as a monster. He took another woman to live with him, and they had a boy—and you can imagine that didn’t go down very well. So Marian grew up hating the Jocelyns, and she brought Anne up to do the same. It wasn’t until she died that her sister-in-law Mrs. Kendal—quite a sensible woman—allowed Anne to meet any of us. Not, of course, that I’m a Jocelyn, but when my sister married Philip’s father we were just lumped in with the rest. So I didn’t see Anne till she was turned nineteen.”

  Lyndall went on looking at her with those
wide, accusing eyes.

  “Why didn’t you like her?”

  She said like, but she meant love. How could anyone have known Anne without loving her? There wasn’t any answer to that.

  Mildred Armitage made a small vexed sound.

  “How on earth do I know! One doesn’t get fond of people in a hurry like that—not at my age. She was young, she was pretty, she had pots of money, and Mrs. Kendal obviously meant her to marry Philip. Well, she married him, and it didn’t last long enough for anyone to know how it would have turned out.”

  “But you didn’t like her!”

  At the angry quiver in Lyndall’s voice Milly Armitage smiled her wide, disarming smile.

  “Don’t get in a rage. You can’t help your feelings. Jane Kendal wanted her to marry Philip, and I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because they were cousins, for one thing. I didn’t think two of a trade would agree. Jocelyns have all got a perfectly lethal streak of pride and self-will.”

  “Anne hadn’t!”

  “Hadn’t she? She wanted to marry Philip, and she married him.”

  “Why shouldn’t she?”

  “No reason at all except that her mother would rather have died than let her do it. I don’t blame Anne about that—I don’t blame either of them. There wasn’t any reason why they shouldn’t marry, but if there had been it wouldn’t have made a ha’porth of difference. Jocelyns are like that. Look at Theresa Jocelyn, going off and living in a Breton château. And why? Because she took up with old Ambrose’s illegitimate grand-daughter and had a furious row with the family on her account. Joyce—that was the name—Annie Joyce. Ambrose called the woman Mrs. Joyce—as near to Jocelyn as he dared go—and the son, Roger, carried it on. Annie was his daughter, and there wasn’t a bean, because Ambrose never signed his will. So when Theresa, who was only an umpteenth cousin, came blinding in and wanted the family to take Annie to their bosom and give her an income, there weren’t any takers, and she quarrelled with everyone and rushed off to France and rented a château. She had quite a lot of money, and of course everyone thought she would leave it to Annie. But she didn’t, she left it to Anne, who’d got plenty already. Sent for her to come over and told her she was going to have the lot, and she must always be kind to Annie because the poor girl was an orphan and had been done out of her rights. Philip said it was indecent, and of course it was. After all the fuss she’d made about the girl!”

  Lyndall’s eyes were stormy. She hated injustice. She loved Anne. The two things struggled in her. She said like an abrupt child,

  “Why did she do it?”

  “Theresa? Because she was a Jocelyn—because she wanted to—because her crazy fancy for Annie Joyce was over and she’d taken a new one for Anne. She came over to the wedding and fell on their necks. A dreadfully tiresome woman, all gush and feathers. To be quite honest, I’m surprised that she had managed to keep out of having a finger in the family pie for as long as she did. The wedding was a perfectly splendid excuse, and it’s my belief she jumped at it. She was probably sick to death of her precious Annie Joyce and all set for a new craze. I believe she would have come back to England for good, but she got ill. By the time she’d sent for Anne it was too late to move her, and things were hotting up in France. That’s when the rows began. Philip put his foot down, and Anne put hers down too. He said she wasn’t to go, and she went. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so angry.”

  “He’d no right to be angry!”

  “My angel child, when married people begin to talk about their rights, it means something has gone pretty far wrong between them.”

  Lyndall said,

  “Did they make it up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It would be dreadful if they didn’t.”

  Milly Armitage had her own ideas about that. Philip had certainly not been in any mood for reconciliation when he left England. She had never seen an angrier man in her life.

  It would have been better if she had kept her thoughts to herself, but she was really incapable of doing so. She said,

  “He was in a most frightful rage—and for the lord’s sake, why are we talking about it? It was a horrid tragic business, and it’s over. Why don’t we leave it alone instead of screwing our heads round over our shoulders and looking back like Lot’s wife? Uncomfortable, useless things, pillars of salt. And I’ve dropped about fifty stitches with you glaring at me like a vulture.”

  “Vultures don’t glare—they have horrid little hoods on their eyes.”

  Milly Armitage burst out laughing.

  “Come and pick up my stitches, and we’ll have a nice calming talk about natural history!”

  Three

  PHILIP JOCELYN RANG up at eight o’clock.

  “Who’s that? ... Lyn? ... All right, tell Aunt Milly I’ll be down to lunch tomorrow—or perhaps not till after lunch. Will that disorganize the rations?”

  Lyn gurgled.

  “I expect so.”

  “Well, I shan’t know until the last minute. Anyhow I can’t make it tonight.”

  “All right. Just wait a second—someone rang you up this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t give any name—only asked if you were here, and when I said you were up in London she wanted to know when you would be back. I said perhaps tonight but most probably not till tomorrow, and she rang off. It was a long distance call and the line was awfully faint.”

  She heard him laugh.

  “The Voice on the Telephone—our great serial mystery—to be continued in our next! Don’t be apologetic—I expect she’ll keep. Give Aunt Milly my love. I kiss your hands and your feet.”

  “You don’t do anything of the sort!”

  “Perhaps not—it’s a sadly unpicturesque age. Good-bye, my child. Be good.” He hung up.

  Lyndall put down the receiver and came back to the fire. She had changed into a warm green housecoat, and Mrs. Armitage into a shapeless garment of brown velveteen with a fur collar which was rather the worse for wear.

  Lyndall said, “That was Philip.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “He doesn’t know whether he’ll be down for lunch tomorrow.”

  Things like that never worried Mrs. Armitage. She nodded, and said with what appeared to be complete irrelevance,

  “What a good thing you and Philip are not really cousins.”

  Lyndall bent forward to put a log on the fire, her long, full skirt flaring out from a childish waist. The glow from the embers stung her cheeks. She murmured,

  “Why?”

  “Well, I just thought it was a good thing. Jocelyns are all very well, and poor Louie was very happy with Philip’s father. He was a most charming man. But that’s what it is with the Jocelyns—they’re charming. But you can have too much of them—they want diluting.”

  It was at this moment that the front door bell rang.

  Anne Jocelyn stood on the dark step and waited for someone to come. The taxi which had brought her from Clayford turned noisily behind her on the gravel sweep. Then it drove away. The sound receded and was gone. She stood in the dark and waited for someone to come. Presently she rang again, but almost at once the key turned in the lock. The door opened a little way and a young girl looked round it. When she saw that it was a woman standing there she stepped back opening the door wide.

  Anne Jocelyn walked in.

  “Is Sir Philip back?”

  Ivy Fossett was a little bit flustered. Visitors didn’t just walk in like that after dark, not these days they didn’t. But it was a lady all right, and a lovely fur coat. She stared her eyes out at it and said,

  “No, ma’am, he isn’t.”

  The lady took her up sharp.

  “Who is here then? Who answered the telephone this morning?”

  “Mrs. Armitage, and Miss Lyndall—Miss Lyndall Armitage. It would be her answered the phone.”

  “Where are they? ... In the Parlo
ur? You needn’t announce me—I’ll go through.”

  Ivy gaped, and watched her go. “Walked right past me as if I wasn’t there,” she told them in the kitchen, and was reproved by Mrs. Ramage, the rather more than elderly cook.

  “You should have asked her name.”

  Ivy tossed her head.

  “She never give me a chanst!”

  Anne crossed the hall. The Parlour looked out to a terrace at the back. The name came down, with the white panelling, from the reign of good Queen Anne. The first Anne Jocelyn had been her goddaughter.

  She put her hand on the door-knob and stood for a moment, loosening her coat, pushing it back to show the blue of the dress beneath. Her heart beat hard against her side. It isn’t every day that one comes back from the dead. Perhaps she was glad that Philip wasn’t there. She opened the door and stood on the threshold looking in.

  Light overhead, the blue curtains drawn at the window, a wood fire glowing bright, and over it the white mantelshelf with The Seasons looking down, and, over The Seasons, The Girl with a Fur Coat. She looked at her steadily, critically, as she might have looked at her own reflection in the glass. She thought the portrait might very well have been a mirror reflecting her.

  There were two people in the room. On the right of the hearth Milly Armitage with a newspaper on her lap and another sprawling beside her on the blue carpet. Untidy, tiresome woman. Never her friend. Of course she would be here. Well dug in. Nous allons changer tout cela. Down on the hearth-rug, curled up with a book, that brat Lyndall.

  The paper rustled under the sudden heavy pressure of Milly Armitage’s hand, the book pitched forward on to the white fur rug. Lyndall sprang up, stumbling on the folds of her long green skirt, catching at the arm of the empty chair against which she had been leaning. Her eyes widened and darkened, all the colour went out of her face. She stared at the open door and saw Anne Jocelyn stepped from the portrait behind her—Anne Jocelyn, bare-headed, with her gold curls and her tinted oval face, pearls hanging down over the thin blue dress, fur coat hanging open.