Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

  “And I walked off and left Brian there to die!”

  “But you couldn’t possibly have known he would drown. You wouldn’t have been blamed,”

  Gwen was shaking her head, sweeping aside my protest. “What difference does it make? I hadn’t the courage to confess.”

  My mind zoomed away in another direction. “About the jacket, Gwen. Are you saying that Brain was wearing one when ... when he fell into the water?”

  She looked at me vaguely, slow to switch her mind to my tack.

  “Yes ... yes, that’s right. He was.”

  “Yet when Bill Wayne found him in the water next morning, he was minus that jacket. How come? Are you quite certain about it?”

  “How could I be mistaken about a thing like that? Do you think I’ll ever be able to forget a single detail of that awful night?”

  “Then it looks as if somebody must have taken it off him, after he was dead.”

  She nodded, screwing up her face in a misery of pain,

  “Yes. I suppose that’s what made me pass out just now. The idea seems so ... so horrible.”

  “But who would do a thing like that?” I asked her. “And what for? Money?”

  “Brian never had any money. He always spent it the minute he got his hands on any.”

  Unwillingly, inevitably, my thoughts flashed to Bill Wayne. Incredulously I considered the possibility. But I rejected it. I had to reject it.

  There was still another question that had to be asked.

  “What was the row about, Gwen? The quarrel between you and Brian earlier in the evening.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she said shortly, “He was a thief. A nasty little thief.”

  She paused again, and then went on, “Brian used to get hold of stuff for my shop. Bits and pieces of Victorian jewelry and bric-a-brac—you know the kind of thing.”

  “That’s what you specialize in, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “We had a sort of arrangement. He was supposed to call at likely houses and pick up whatever he could on the cheap. There’s no end to the oddments tucked away in drawers and cupboards—family relics, things like that. The owners think of it just as so much junk, and are glad enough to be offered a pound or two in hard cash. Usually they haven’t the faintest idea what it’s really worth.”

  “And that’s what Brian was doing for you?”

  “That’s what he said he was doing. And whatever he claimed to have paid for a thing, I’d give him double or more. I was still able to make a good profit.”

  It sounded like pretty sharp practice to me. Underhand.

  Gwen must have read my frown correctly. “It’s done all the time, Kim. In my sort of business you buy cheap and sell dear if you can. Anyway, it’s a darn sight more honest than what Brian was actually doing.”

  “You mean the things he sold you were stolen?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I only found out that evening.”

  “And you had a row about it?”

  “He was showing me a little mother-of-pearl snuffbox he said he’d bought at a farmhouse over Petersfield way. But I recognized it. I’d sold the thing myself a few years before to a big collector of Victoriana. I realized, then, why it was that some of the other things from Brian had seemed vaguely familiar.”

  “You mean he had stolen a whole lot from the one collection?”

  “Yes. It was dead easy for him. The man’s widow was an invalid, and Brian was nicely dug in with her nurse. Of course, I was absolutely furious about it. But Brian just laughed. He said that if I wanted to make trouble for him, he could make plenty for me. I was a receiver of stolen goods, and who would ever believe I hadn’t known what was going on all the time?”

  So now I knew the truth about Brian Hearne’s accident.

  Gwen was still talking, floundering in an ooze of guilt and shame and fear. But I’d stopped listening to her. I was listening now to the questions erupting in my own mind. Gwen had told me a great deal, but her story only thickened the mystery.

  Nothing she had said explained why the whole family were hypersensitive about Brian’s death. Nothing explained the climate of explosive discord. I still couldn’t understand why the happiness of a small child was being heedlessly sacrificed.

  And what about the missing jacket?

  The answers to these questions were woven somehow into the shroud of silence that lay over Mildenhall.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gwen couldn’t face up to the rest of the family that evening. She was in no condition to face up to anything. I persuaded her to go to her own room and lie down, while I went off and scrounged scrambled eggs and coffee from Miss Pink.

  I took the tray up myself, wanting to keep Gwen off the drink if I possibly could. She was certainly in a mood for a real bender; a soothing alcoholic curtain. I hung around with her until just before dinner time, and then went downstairs. I had to show my face at table. The headache excuse would do for Gwen, but it would hardly stretch credibly over the pair of us.

  The family were all there, but fortunately they had no visitors tonight. At the head of the table Drew was as morose as ever. When not looking down at his plate, which was most of the time, he seemed to be watching me covertly in a sad sort of way. Wondering, no doubt, why I didn’t clear off and leave him to his miserable peace.

  Corinne managed to make great play with the wine bottle, conveying to everyone that I needed enough for two. I had to counter her tactics by leaving my glass brim full.

  Tansy kept herself on the go even more than usual, pattering off with every empty dish the moment it was done with. “There’s a new serial starting tonight,” she offered as full and adequate explanation of Miss Pink’s absence. I’d have given Tansy a hand most willingly, but I knew from a few tentative moves in the last day or so that it would be a mistake. Now that our relationship had taken a turn to the sour, she’d not welcome any help from me,

  I wondered if poor Tansy had any idea that her son had been a thief. Perhaps she had guessed. Gwen claimed that his mother knew him for a waster. Hadn’t she told me Tansy was guilt-ridden because she had never been able to love her worthless son? Coming on top of an already disturbed conscience his death might well have been enough to account for her slightly loopy oddities.

  Felix and Verity must have felt cheated of their most responsive butt this evening. In Gwen’s absence they pretended great solicitude about her.

  “A headache, you say?” The tilt of Felix’s head displayed a nice degree of disbelief. “It usually takes rather a lot to get Gwen down.”

  “Poor Gwen,” cooed Verity. “There’s nothing worse than a headache for making you feel wretched. I find that a glass of champagne usually bucks me up. But perhaps in Gwen’s case that wouldn’t be wise.”

  “Coffee might be better,” Felix suggested helpfully. “Strong black coffee.”

  I fumed inwardly but smiled outwardly. “Gwen just needs a quiet evening. Some people find that when they’re a bit under the weather even their nearest and dearest can be rather a strain.”

  With a tiny bow Felix conceded me a win on points.

  When I went upstairs again Gwen was looking distinctly better. It struck me that she had gone quite a long way towards shedding her misery. But the trouble about the problem-shared, problem-halved business was that someone had to inherit the other half. Gwen might be feeling a comforting sense of relief, but I was still trying to adjust my balance under the new load.

  I was foolish to let it weigh me down, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps that’s what drives people into jobs like speech-therapy—a sort of inner compulsion to get involved in other people’s troubles.

  It was no good kidding myself that I could just forget the whole thing. Now that a mystery had sprung up about Brian’s death, something had to be done about it but what?

  My inclination, my temptation, was to consult with Drew. He would know what to do. But once before I’d taken a problem to him, and it had swung right back at me—s
traight at my own head.

  So failing help from Drew, I decided in the end to tackle Bill Wayne.

  It was dark outside by now. I pulled on a short coat against the evening chill, and crepe-soled shoes against that echoing staircase. I crept down quietly, wanting not to be noticed, and let myself out into the night.

  Once clear of the deep shadows of the trees, it was raining starlight, altogether too softly romantic for words. I was afraid Bill Wayne would get the wrong idea about my dropping in at his cottage like this for the second night running.

  He did get the wrong idea. His eyes widened and gleamed with male conceit.

  “Kim! This is wonderful. Come along in.”

  He came to help me off with my coat, ‘but his hands lingered on my shoulders. He was confidently expecting me to turn within his arms and give myself up to his kiss.”

  I twisted away from him quickly. “This isn’t exactly a social call, Bill.”

  “How would you define it exactly?” he said with a grin. Without waiting for an answer he hustled me into his sitting room. Fetching drinks, he came and perched companionably on the upholstered arm of my chair.

  “Now then, what’s this all about?”

  “I’ve come to talk to you seriously.”

  “Darling, there’s nothing I’d like better. Well—almost nothing.” His arm slipped down the back of the chair and came to rest on my shoulders,

  I got up at once and stood facing him.

  “Bill, don’t fool about. Listen to me.” Without properly preparing the ground I threw out the question that had been niggling at me even before Gwen’s disclosures. I flung it at him crudely.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was you who found Brian’s body?”

  The grin was swept from his face as a windshield wiper clears rain. He jumped up too, pretty nearly spilling his drink before putting it safely on the mantelpiece.

  “There’s no need to look so shaken,” I said, feeling considerably shaken myself.

  He gave a good imitation of a laugh. “It was just such a damn sudden change of subject,”

  I knew there was a lot more to it than that. Again I poked the stark question at him. “It’s simple enough, Bill. I’m asking why you didn’t tell me it was you who found Brian’s body.”

  “Well ... the occasion never arose.”

  “Oh yes it did. Wasn’t it very odd to tell me about him drowning, and yet not say you found the body? Weren’t you being a bit evasive?”

  Bill made no attempt to deny this allegation. “Just forget, it, Kim,” he mumbled. “It’s not important. Who told you, anyway?”

  I explained to him that because I was sure it had a bearing on Jane’s problem I had gone to the trouble of looking up the Coroner’s verdict in the paper.

  “But there’s something very strange, Bill.”

  “What’s so strange?”

  His face had turned a curious putty-grey color. All at once he looked desperately tired. When he picked up his drink and finished it, I heard the quick rattle of glass against his teeth.

  My difficulty was, how much should I tell him? I wasn’t going to implicate Gwen if I could possibly avoid it. I’d have to go along just playing by ear.

  I began very deliberately. “The newspaper report described how you found the body dressed in shirt and trousers.”

  “That’s right.”

  “No jacket?”

  Bill was a rotten actor. A whole gamut of emotions registered on his face. I recognized astonishment, incredulity, plain fear, and then a wary calculation of my motives.

  “Wasn’t Brian wearing a jacket?” I persisted.

  “Why should he have been? It was a warm night.”

  “There’s a very good reason, Bill. You see, Brian was quite definitely wearing a jacket when he fell in the pond.”

  Bill didn’t drop his glass; he hung on to it. I heard a crack, and saw his hand clenched, knuckles hard and white and shining. A drop of blood dripped to the carpet.

  I crossed to him quickly. “You’ve cut yourself. Let me see.”

  I went to take the broken glass away, but his fingers stayed gripped tight. He spoke in a soft voice, slurring the words almost as if he were drunk.

  “How could you possibly know what Brian was wearing?”

  “I was told.”

  Almost before I’d spoken, he shouted. “Who the devil told you then?”

  He made a frightening picture, his eyes glaring, blood dripping steadily from his hand to the carpet. At last I said carefully, “Never mind who told me. I just know.”

  He stood rock still, not even blinking. Suddenly he flung out, “It must have been Gwen.”

  “Gwen?” I managed to say with apparent surprise. “What makes you think it was her?”

  “It has to be Gwen,” he said decidedly. “Felix and Verity weren’t here when it happened, and there’s nobody else at Mildenhall likely to have told you a thing like that.”

  I was silent. I’d not bargained for Bill having such a logical mind.

  “It was Gwen, wasn’t it?” he punched at me. “But how the devil does she come into the matter?”

  He had to be told something, so I measured out a small dose of fact.

  “Gwen saw him fall in. She was actually there.”

  Bill glanced down at his hand and for the first time seemed aware of what he had done. The small tumbler was crushed into a dozen savage splinters of glass. He started picking them out of the flesh one by one, building a neat pile on a brass ashtray. His palm was a horrible mess of blood.

  “For heaven’s sake, Bill, you’d better go and wash it.”

  He gave a wry smile. “There’s no need. The whiskey will be disinfectant enough.”

  Pulling a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, he wound it roughly around the cut hand.

  Then, still looking down, he said thoughtfully, “If Gwen saw Brian fall in the pond, why didn’t she help him to get out?”

  “She couldn’t,” I improvised. “He was too drunk.”

  Bill eyed me shrewdly. “I see! The man was incapably drunk, so she left him to drown?”

  “No, of course not. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “So what was it like?”

  Somehow I had to make half the truth sound sufficiently credible to satisfy Bill.

  “Gwen was out for a walk and met Brian coming back from the pub. He was pretty high and apparently ribbed her like mad—you can imagine the sort of thing. Really meant to hurt. When he staggered and fell into the pond, she thought a cold douche would sober him up. So she left him to it. She went back to the house and straight to bed.”

  “And she never told anyone?”

  “Isn’t that easy enough to understand? Next morning when you.... when the body was found, she felt terrible about it. But nothing she said then could possibly help Brian, and besides she was bitterly ashamed.”

  Bill nodded. “Yes, I can believe that. But why should she spill it all to you now?”

  “She didn’t mean to. It was when I showed her the report of the inquest. She was badly shaken when she read the bit about Brian being dressed just in shirt and trousers.”

  Bill went over to the drinks table and got himself another glass.

  “As a matter of fact,” I volunteered, “Gwen seemed to find it rather a relief to tell someone. She’d had the weight dragging on her mind for a long time.” I paused a moment before adding very deliberately, “Like you, Bill.”

  I watched his guard click into place.

  “And what might that mean?”

  “You know something about Brian’s missing jacket, don’t you?”

  We went on staring at one another, silently fencing for position. But I knew I was on top.

  To disengage his eyes Bill did a fussy bit of business with the armchair, quite unnecessarily pulling it round for me.

  “Do sit down again, Kim.”

  I sat down. “Well?”

  “Gwen must have been mistaken,” he said smoothly. �
��There was no jacket when I found him.”

  “Gwen wasn’t mistaken. You should have seen her reaction to that newspaper report. She jumped even higher than you did just now.”

  “Me jump!”

  “Come off it, Bill, You didn’t crush that glass and gash your hand just for the sheer hell of it.”

  He changed tactics swiftly. “It was the shock,” he admitted. “What you said was fantastic! Unbelievable!”

  “Not unbelievable at all. Gwen says he went into the water with a jacket on, and you say he came out without one. So somebody must have taken it off him in the meantime. What I want to know is who? And why?”

  “Well, don’t ask me. How should I know?”

  But Bill did know. Or at least he knew something. He had the look of a man really on the defensive.

  I decided it was time to push him hard. Feeling an awful heel because I was only bluffing, I put on a virtuous tone. “I think perhaps I ought to report this business to the authorities. There’s clearly something that needs investigating,”

  “Don’t be crazy!” Suddenly Bill was gripping my shoulders as if he wanted to shake the life out of me. There was a wild look in his eyes. He seemed near the !limit of self-control.

  All at once I was trembling, scared by the new thoughts that rippled through my brain. Before, when I’d been talking with Gwen, I’d easily rejected the idea that Bill himself might have removed the jacket. He was much too normal, much too nice.

  But now I was seeing him in a new light.

  It was a logical conclusion. The fish ponds were on private land. Remote. No stranger would come past that way at night. Bill Wayne had admitted to finding Brian early in the morning, soon after daybreak. Wasn’t it only too likely that he had been the first person to see the body?

  Terror crashed through me. Not a soul knew where I was. I had come alone to Bill’s cottage, thinking I’d been clever to slip away from Mildenhall unseen.

  Bill was still looming over me. He held me in a vicious grip, fingers biting brutally into my flesh.

  I screamed.

  I think it was only a little scream, more a whimper of fear than a cry for help. But it was enough to make him drop me. He let me go like I was suddenly hot.