Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

  I wondered in which pond Brian Hearne had met his death.

  The macadam drive from the house struck right through this layout to a sprawling group of concrete-block buildings. Our path curved leftwards to join this roadway, and soon there was water on either side of us. I stopped to take a closer look. The crystal ponds teemed with trout—dark fluent shapes that quivered with electrical energy. A swarming multitude of fish.

  “There are upwards of five thousand rainbows in here,” Bill told me with careless pride. “We raise these for the table. But that next lot are brown trout which we send out to restock fishing rivers.”

  I looked around to see if I could spot Drew, but he was nowhere in sight. Some way off two men were busy at one of the smaller ponds, apparently catching fish in a huge net.

  “We have to grade the trout periodically,” Bill explained. “Sort out the big ’uns from the little ’uns.”

  Bill was very enthusiastic about the whole set-up. He explained each operation in detail as we toured first the ponds and then the buildings. But I wasn’t really in the mood to take much in. My mind was too occupied elsewhere.

  “Did Mr. Barrington start all this himself?”

  “Yes. About eight years ago now. Drew realized that if he was ever to keep Mildenhall going, he’d have to develop something new. Not being a fish man himself, it was clever of him to see the potential of all this good spring water he’s got here for free,”

  We had reached the food store, a small lean-to. Bill opened a bin and took up a tin scoopful of pellet feed.

  “Come and see them eat.”

  We went out again and walked across the grass to the edge of the rainbow pond. With a broad sweeping movement Bill flicked the crumby feed far across the water.

  I expected to see the surface break as the fish rose to take it. But I was not prepared for the sudden boiling turmoil of the water, the savagely writhing bodies. And then in seconds it was over, the food pellets all gone, the pond settling back to calm serenity.

  I shivered. “There’s something ... oh I don’t know—so primeval about them.”

  Bill was amused. “Yes, they like their grub all right.”

  When I thanked him for showing me round, he suggested walking back to the house with me.

  “There’s no need, thank you, Bill.”

  “But I want to.” He was very definite about it, and when we got to where the path branched off, he stuck to the road—the longer way back. He fixed our pace at a slow stroll and went into the old routine of getting-to-know-you-better. I had to be evasive.

  As we neared the house, he asked, “When are you going back to town, Kim? Monday morning?”

  Uncomfortably I avoided giving him a flat answer. “Well, it’s not quite settled yet.”

  “I hope I’ll be seeing you again, anyway.”

  “Oh, I expect you will.”

  I tried to say it lightly because his eyes were trying to make the situation very meaningful indeed.

  Chapter Six

  Gwen was sitting out on the terrace when I got back to the house. Before I could join her, I heard Drew call my name as if he’d been waiting for me.

  “Miss Bennett.” I swung round and saw him at the drawing room door. “Perhaps we could talk now?”

  “Why, yes, of course.”

  I followed him through the hall to a small quiet room on the dark side of the house. It was masculine and comfortable in a gloomy sort of way, with a red turkey carpet and leather-covered armchairs. Two walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with books.

  Facing him across a wide mahogany desk, I was prepared for a formal interview. But in fact Drew appeared rather ill-at-ease. He was slumped in his swivel chair, drumming his fingertips together.

  There was a lengthy pause before he said; “What did you think of the trout farm, Miss Bennett?”

  “I found it quite fascinating.”

  That was stretching the truth a bit. But I consoled my itching conscience with the knowledge that I certainly would have found the farm fascinating if my mind hadn’t already been absorbed with other things.

  His gray eyes regarded me darkly. “I’m glad you liked it. If I’d realized you were so interested, I’d have been delighted to take you around myself.”

  “Thank you.”

  I wished it had been he. I’d have enjoyed seeing Drew Barrington showing a bit of enthusiasm about something. There must surely be another side to his nature.

  Again there was a long pause while he studied me thoughtfully. At last he began on the real meat of the interview. .

  “This er ... this business about my daughter. It’s rather awkward ...”

  I helped him out. “We made a very bad start. Gwen had no right to throw it at you like that. I was under the impression I was coming here at your invitation, and it was only on the journey down that I learned otherwise. I’m very sorry.”

  “I can well imagine how it happened.” His eyes lit momentarily with a warmth that transformed his whole face. “I’ve known my aunt for a long time, Miss Bennett. It’s you, I think, who is due the apology.”

  Edgily, he stood up and walked over to the window. “You really believe you could help Jane?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m sure of it.” I paused, adding pointedly, “As long as everyone is willing to cooperate.”

  “Yes.” When he swung round to face me again his eyes were full of pain, pleading for my understanding. “I realize, of course, that Aunt Tansy isn’t the perfect companion for a child. But Jane must have someone to look after her, and my aunt is very devoted.”

  A child with a mother shouldn’t need a substitute. The thought was there in my mind, but I managed to keep from voicing it. Instead, I said, “I’m sure Mrs. Hearne loves little Jane.”

  “I love her too, Miss Bennett. Very much.”

  I wondered why he thought it necessary to state what should have been obvious.

  He went back to staring out of the window. “The trouble is, the trout farm demands so much of my attention. And my time.”

  “It must be very absorbing,”

  “Eh?” My comment seemed to have interrupted the direction of his thoughts. “Oh, yes, it is. I dare not let up. We are only just getting the place going with a reasonably comfortable profit margin ...” He dried up, as if imagining he was talking too much. Then abruptly he shot at me: “What was it that took you off to America?”

  “A combination of circumstances. It was the winter before last, and my mother had just died ...”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My father had been dead for some time. I’d just about finished my training when I met Dr. Jacobson. He was over here on a lecture tour, and he offered me a job at his speech-training clinic in Cincinnati. It was too good a chance to miss, and there was nothing to keep me in England. Only Hilary, and somehow we never quite seemed to click as sisters.”

  “Yet you came straight back when she was taken ill?”

  “What else could I do? She was helpless with polio, and had nobody at all. I’d never have forgiven myself if I hadn’t come, and ...”

  He nodded, understanding. “And now you mean to go back to America?”

  “Yes, I think so. England’s got too many unhappy memories for me just now.”

  “Why is it you are willing to stay on and help Jane, then?”

  Suddenly he was looking at me so squarely and directly that I had to turn away. Though I answered with the truth, somehow it sounded oddly false.

  “I’ve got to be here for a while, anyway, clearing up Hilary’s odds and ends. A bit longer won’t matter terribly ...” I trailed off, then added lamely, “Gwen was awfully good to my sister, although she must have known that Hilary would never be well enough to work for her again.”

  I could see Drew arriving at a decision. He smiled at me quickly. “I am very grateful to you. I’d like to be sure you have every facility. Please let me know if you need any special equipment.”

  It was ridiculous that I shou
ld feel a surge of joy at being permitted to do a job I’d previously looked on as a favor to Gwen. A job, moreover, that I’d much have preferred to pass by altogether.

  “There may be one or two things I shall want as we go along,” I said happily. “But most of all what I need is the wholehearted support of everybody at Mildenhall. Especially you and your wife.”

  He stuck out his jaw in a gesture of determination, “And you shall have it, I promise you that.”

  * * * *

  I was experienced enough not to expect anything in speech therapy to be plain sailing. I was ready for a struggle with Jane. I was ready for her to play me up with sullen fits and awkward moods. That was all part of the job.

  But I wasn’t prepared for the utter turnabout in the little girl’s attitude to me.

  Yesterday at our very first meeting she had fought her shyness in order to approach me. Only this morning a friendly handkerchief had fluttered from her nursery window. But at lunch her freckled face was tight closed against me. I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t respond, her eyes wary and hostile.

  From the end of the long table Corinne was watching my futile attempts to make contact with her daughter. With scarcely shrouded mockery she asked loudly: “When do you want to get down to work on Jane?”

  I shook my head, distressed. This wasn’t the moment. And this wasn’t the way to do it, either. I should be left to make my own approach to Jane, to win her confidence slowly.

  But Corinne wasn’t having that. “We must fix you up with a private room for all the special apparatus you require in your corrective training.”

  She made it sound like I was going to use instruments of torture on the child.

  I answered Corinne obliquely by speaking to Jane. “You’ve got such a nice room upstairs. Will you let me come and play with you sometimes?”

  I realized then what I should have guessed before. Corinne had been busy spraying poison. Jane looked at her mother in terror and started spluttering painfully, going red-faced with the effort it cost her,

  “I d-d-don’t w-w-want to.”

  In an agony of embarrassment she hung her head so low that it barely appeared above the table.

  Drew said quickly and very firmly, “Let us talk about something else.”

  “But there are arrangements to be made,” Corinne insisted. She regarded her husband with a show of concern. “After all, Drew darling, you told me to give Miss Bennett every assistance.”

  “Nevertheless,” he said, impatience showing in every crack of his voice, “I am asking you not to discuss the matter just now,” His glance rested for a second on his daughter’s bowed head. “The reason is perfectly obvious.”

  Tansy was fussing over Jane. “Eat up your carrots, Janey. They’re so good for you.”

  “I don’t like c-c-c-c ...”

  “Now don’t try to say that word, dear. You know you always have trouble with it.”

  I felt a sense of black despair. What was I doing here? What could I expect to achieve in such a household? It wasn’t any wonder Jane stammered. I’d have been astonished if she didn’t. There wasn’t a single soul at Mildenhall who offered the child any hope of a normally balanced life.

  I could so easily call it off, even now. I could say that Jane wouldn’t accept me; that it was impossible to do any useful work with her in such an atmosphere of distrust and hostility. But looking at the tiny, mutinous figure of Jane, looking at Drew’s dark troubled face, I knew with absolute clarity that it just wasn’t in me to run away from this problem.

  Gwen had been smugly pleased with herself ever since it was settled that I should stay on at Mildenhall. The embarrassing episode at dinner last night was conveniently forgotten. She gave herself enormous credit for arranging what she regarded as a certain and complete cure for Jane’s stammering.

  Now she decided to interfere again. She beamed up-table at her elder sister. “You ought to take Kim for a walk this afternoon, Tansy.”

  “Oh, I’d like to, but I can hardly leave ...”

  With head-nodding gestures ten times bigger than necessary, Gwen conveyed that a threesome walk would be a very good way for me to get to know Jane better. I reached against this suggestion instinctively, because I was being pushed. Then I had second thoughts. Perhaps after all it wasn’t such a bad idea. A walk, with new things to see and talk about every few yards, might provide an atmosphere just right for building Jane’s confidence in me.

  I said decisively: “Thank you, Mrs. Hearne. I’d love to come.”

  Calculating that the trout farm, the scene of Brian’s death, wouldn’t appeal to Tansy, I tried to be diplomatic. “I thought those chestnut woods on the other side of the lane looked very pretty when we arrived yesterday. Could we go that way, do you think?”

  Poor Tansy looked quite flummoxed, not getting the point. Then it clicked, and her faded face sprang to warm life.

  “Why, of course. We’d enjoy that, wouldn’t we, Janey dear?”

  Stubbornly, lips set hard, the little girl shook her head.

  “Wouldn’t you like to show Miss Bennett the pretty woods?”

  I shot in a quick countermeasure to this silliness, speaking directly to Tansy. “We had a chestnut wood near our home, and I remember my mother showing me how to make little fairy baskets. It would be rather fun to try and make some now. If we can find some nice springy twigs I’ll see what I can do.”

  The indirect approach worked better that I’d expected. Jane had lifted her head at last and was leaning forward to see past Tansy. I felt the stare of her big round eyes and dared not meet it, for fear she would see right through my tactics.

  “Just little baskets, so big ...” I sketched my hands in the air. “Afterwards I’d hang them up in my bedroom. Sometimes I’d have as many as a dozen all at once.”

  I’d managed to catch the little girl’s imagination, and I think even poor Tansy understood what I was after. Certainly, everyone else did. I sensed a deepening of Drew’s respect. As for Gwen, she was beaming in the reflected glory of her protégée’s success.

  I was feeling quite pleased with myself, too—until I caught Corinne’s expression of sheer malice. I looked away hastily. Verity and Felix were grinning, and I realized they were perfectly well aware of their sister’s smoldering rage. From ringside seats they were quietly enjoying the build-up to an inevitable eruption.

  Drew excused himself the minute the meal was over. I fixed with Tansy that we’d set out about three-thirty, and she took Jane away upstairs for a short rest.

  Gwen hiked herself up from her chair with a grunt. “Come on, Kim, let’s have our coffee outside. I’ll go and put a bomb under Pinky.”

  I was glad to make a getaway. But even outside, a little distance along the terrace, I could hear the rise and fall of sniping voices.

  I tried to shut the Harper tribe out of my mind, settling down in the comfortable garden chair.

  And then, from just inside the window, Corinne’s voice sailed out and hit me squarely. She spoke coolly and with deliberation, and I knew I was meant to overhear every word.

  “She won’t be staying long at Mildenhall. Don’t either of you make any mistake about that.”

  Chapter Seven

  As it turned out, the walk with Tansy and Jane was a great success. I thanked heaven fervently that chestnut twigs could somehow be tortured into shapes actually resembling baskets. Good enough, at any rate, to catch a five-year-old’s fancy. All in all, I reckoned I’d made quite a hit with Jane.

  Once or twice, when she was completely absorbed weaving the bendy twigs in and out, she forgot to stammer.

  “Look,” she cried excitedly, “I can do it for myself.”

  I shot out a restraining hand to check a doting gush of praise from Tansy. Lucidly, the message got through to her.

  “You do learn quickly,” I said to Jane seriously. “Already you’re nearly as good at it as I am.”

  She gave me a shy smile of pleasure. Achievement was so
mething rare in her young life.

  But I wasn’t fooled by the easy conquest. I’d faced rusted prejudice in parents often enough, but this was in a different category. Corinne had declared war on me. For some strange reason she was on the wrong side in the fight for Jane’s speech.

  I decided to tackle Gwen about this unaccountable obstacle.

  On Sunday morning she put in an appearance around ten o’clock. She’d been hitting the bottle again the previous evening, and looked distinctly owl-eyed.

  “How about you taking me out for a drive?” I suggested.

  She looked surprised at my use of her own forceful tactics. But as she was off back to town first thing Monday, I hadn’t any time to waste.

  “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. ‘When do you want to set out?”

  “As soon as you like. I’ve got something else to do.”

  I’d have enjoyed going just for the ride. It was the sort of lovely autumn morning that would blot out the memory of two weeks’ solid rain. A shady tracery of baring branches dappled the lanes, lazy vapor rising where the sun discovered remnants of last night’s dew.

  But I had a job to do. Questions to get answered.

  “Corinne doesn’t seem to like me much,” I began baldly.

  Gwen managed a painful grin as she buzzed the little car up a hill.

  “Corinne likes Corinne likes Corinne,” she said with heavy humor.

  “That I can well believe.” I longed to ask how a man like Drew ever came to marry such a woman. But that wasn’t really the point. “I wish I could understand her attitude, though. I mean, it’s as if she didn’t want her daughter to be helped.”

  “Her motives are certainly pretty complicated.”

  Gwen swung off abruptly into a narrow winding lane. She had to concentrate on driving as we whizzed between high earth banks. When the road widened again, Gwen said deliberately and very sourly, “If you want my opinion, Corinne’s a thoroughgoing bitch.”