“Don’t want it! Don’t like it! Won’t eat it!”
Mrs. Craddock said, “Ssh!” in a guilty voice, and then, “Mrs. Masters must have forgotten. I did tell her-nobody liked it.”
“She likes making it,” said Maurice with angry gloom.
Jennifer said accusingly, “If you didn’t have cornflour in the house, she couldn’t make it.”
Mrs. Craddock helped the horrid whiteness with a trembling hand. Mr. Craddock had as yet said nothing, but he looked as if he might at any moment let fly with a thunderbolt. Instead, he merely pushed back his chair and left the table.
Nobody ate the cornflour shape except Miss Silver, but after Mr. Craddock’s departure the children partook of hearty slices of bread and jam whilst competing cheerfully as to who could say the most insulting things about the rejected blancmange.
Later on when they were in bed, Mrs. Craddock recurred to the incident. The darning-needle shook in her hand as she said,
“I am such a very bad manager, and I cannot cook at all well. Everything seems to go wrong when I try.”
“But you have Mrs. Masters to do the cooking,” said Miss Silver.
“She despises me,” said Emily Craddock in a helpless voice. “She knows that I cannot do the things myself, so she takes no notice of anything I say. I have told her over and over again that Mr. Craddock will not sit at table with a blancmange and the children hate it. But it is so easy to do, and when she is in a hurry she will make it.”
Miss Silver said,
“If you did not have any cornflour-”
“Then she uses sago, and that is worse.”
“Perhaps if you did not have any sago-”
“She would find something else,” said Mrs. Craddock in a despairing voice. A tear dropped upon a much darned undergarment. “Sometimes I feel as if I couldn’t go on. If it were not for you-” She sniffed faintly.
Miss Silver said with gravity,
“You require rest and relief from responsibility. Jennifer and Maurice would be far better at school-even Benjy.”
Emily Craddock gave a startled cry.
“Oh, no, no! I couldn’t! Mr. Craddock wouldn’t approve- and I shouldn’t feel they were safe. He says it is foolish of me, but I can’t help feeling frightened about them when they are away. You see, I very nearly lost them all last summer.”
“My dear Mrs. Craddock!”
The tears were running down Emily Craddock’s face.
“Such a pleasant seaside holiday, but I nearly lost them all- and Mr. Craddock too. They were all out in the boat, and it overturned. I was having my afternoon rest-and they were nearly drowned-all of them. It took them a long time to bring Benjy round. None of the children could swim.”
“And Mr. Craddock?”
“Only a little-just enough to keep himself afloat. He couldn’t help them. If it hadn’t been for some men in another boat… It gave me such a terrible shock. I don’t seem to get over it.” She fumbled for a handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes.
Casting about for a change of subject, Miss Silver recalled the meeting with Mr. John Robinson. It would, she considered, divert Mrs. Craddock from an agitating topic and at the same time gratify her own strong desire for information about the tenant of the other wing. She introduced the name in a bright conversational manner, adding,
“He came up and spoke to us out in the courtyard this afternoon when we came back from our walk.”
Mrs. Craddock had stopped crying. She had a fluttered look. She said,
“Oh-” And then, “Was he at all-strange?”
Miss Silver was putting the final touches to the pale blue coatee. She said,
“He quoted a line of poetry.”
“He does-at least I believe-I have heard that he does. You know, I’ve never spoken to him myself. He is-” she hesitated for a word-“rather strange. Quite solitary, I believe. He has been here for some months, but I have only seen him just once or twice in the distance. It does seem strange, but I am sure he is quite harmless. He speaks to the children sometimes. I used to worry about it, but last autumn- Oh, Miss Silver, they had such a narrow escape-and it was all due to him-so whatever people say about him, I shall always be grateful.”
Miss Silver fastened off her thread and ran it in along a seam. It was not until she had completed this task that she said,
“They had an escape?”
Emily Craddock’s thin hands were clasping one another convulsively.
“Oh, yes! It was when that Miss Ball was with us-and of course she didn’t understand that sort of thing at all. They went out to look for mushrooms, and they found some very fine ones up on the edge of the pinewood over the hill. And when they were coming home they met Mr. Robinson, and he said where had they found so many, and when they told him he looked at them and said they weren’t mushrooms at all but some horrid poisonous thing. He said real mushrooms don’t grow near pine trees, but something that looks very like them does, and he made them throw them all out. Of course it wasn’t Miss Ball’s fault, for how could she know-but it upset me dreadfully, and of course I couldn’t help feeling so very grateful to Mr. Robinson, because if he hadn’t happened to meet them-”
“It was indeed providential,” said Miss Silver.
CHAPTER XVII
Miss Silver woke up in the dark. One moment there had been a vague but pleasant dream, the next she was broad awake and considering what it was that had wakened her. It was just as if she had stepped from one room into another and closed the door behind her. But in the moment of that passing there had been a sound, and she thought that the sound had been a scream. There was a reading-lamp beside her bed. She turned it on and saw that the hands of her watch stood between one and two. The sound might have come from outside-an owl’s cry perhaps, but she did not think so. She thought it came from the room next door-from Jennifer’s room. There was a communicating door, but it had been locked ever since she came, with no sign of a key on either side. She got up, put on her slippers and a warm blue dressing-gown, and went out into the passage.
Of the five bedrooms in use four were on this side of the stairs -Jennifer next to herself, Mrs. Craddock and the little boys across the way. Beyond the well of the stairs, in the direction of the main building, Mr. Craddock’s room looked out upon the courtyard.
The passage was unlit from end to end. Miss Silver stood in the dark and listened. A sound came to her from the room next to hers-something between a groan and a sob. She went quietly to the door and opened it. The room was quite dark, except where the square of the window showed faintly against a denser gloom. Between it and the opened door a light air moved. A curtain stirred, blew out, and fell again. Jennifer’s gasping voice said,
“No-no-no! Take it away!”
Miss Silver came into the room, turned on the light, and shut the door behind her. Jennifer sat bolt upright, her hands pressing down upon the bed on either side of her, her pose rigid, her eyes wide, her dark hair wild. She did not look at Miss Silver, because she did not see her. What she saw was a picture in a dream, and the dream was horrible.
Miss Silver went over to the bed, sat down upon it, and laid her hand gently over one of those straining ones. At once the pose broke up. Both Jennifer’s hands clutched at her, held to her. The blankness went from the eyes. They gazed in terror, then focussed on Miss Silver, not in full recognition but with a piteous effect of groping.
Miss Silver said, at her kindest and most matter-of-fact,
“It is quite all right, my dear. You have been dreaming.”
The child’s grip was frightening. Miss Silver did not bruise easily, but she kept the mark of those fingers for days. Jennifer said in a horrid whisper,
“It was the Hand!”
“It was a dream, my dear.”
There was a long, deep sigh.
“You didn’t see it.”
“It was a dream. There was nothing to see.”
This time the sigh became a shudder that shook the bed.
“You didn’t see it. I did.”
Miss Silver said firmly,
“Jennifer, my dear, there is nothing to see. You have had a bad dream and it has frightened you, but now you are awake again. There is nothing to frighten you any more. If you will let go of me I will get you a glass of water.”
She would not have thought it possible that Jennifer’s grasp could have tightened, but it seemed to do so. The thin body shook, the eyes stared. Words came tumbling out.
“You don’t know-you didn’t see it! Mr. Masters told me- I thought it was just a story-I did-I did! I didn’t think it was true!”
“What did he tell you, my dear?”
Jennifer went on staring and shaking.
“About the Everlys-why there aren’t any more of them. There weren’t any boys. There was old Miss Maria, only she wasn’t old then, and there was Clarice, and Isabella-three of them-and there was a man and he was their cousin, but they couldn’t all marry him. Mr. Masters said it was a pity, because then it wouldn’t have happened like it did.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“A very foolish and improper remark, my dear.”
“It wouldn’t have happened,” said Jennifer-“not if he could have married them all. Solomon had a thousand wives, and he was in the Bible. Mr. Masters said one was trouble enough for most, and three to one wasn’t fair odds, but it would have been better if the cousin could have married the three of them, because then Isabella wouldn’t-” She choked on a caught breath.
“What did Isabella do?” said Miss Silver gravely.
“She killed her.” Jennifer’s whisper crawled with horror. “He was going to marry Clarice, and she killed her-with the axe-out of the wood-shed. She cut her hand right off-the one with the ring he had given her. They said she was mad-and shut her up. And Maria went on living here all by herself until she died, and there weren’t any more Everlys.”
“A terrible story, my dear. It was very wrong of Mr. Masters to speak of it.”
Jennifer shuddered.
“He had to-it wasn’t his fault. I told him about the doors being kept locked into the big house. And I told him I was going in to explore, and he said I mustn’t do it, because-” she tripped and stumbled over the words-“because of the hand- because of Clarice’s hand.”
“My dear-”
“He said people saw it. He said there was a boy-a long time ago-he saw it, and-he never spoke again.”
“Then, my dear, how did anyone know what he had seen?”
Jennifer gave an impatient jerk.
“I don’t know-Mr. Masters said… And there was a girl- she got drowned. She used to work here-her name was Mary Cheeseman. She used to say she didn’t believe in any such tales, and she found a way to get in. At least I think she did-she wouldn’t tell. And she got drowned going home. Pushed down in the bog, Mr. Masters said-‘like as if it was a hand had pushed her.’ ”
“Mr. Masters is a foolish and superstitious old man. I do not think that any of his stories lose in the telling. I have heard about poor Mary. It was a rainy night, and she missed the bridge and wandered into the bog.”
Jennifer sat up straight, her face quite close to Miss Silver’s, her eyes unnaturally bright.
“Did she?” she said. “Did she?” She let go of Miss Silver as suddenly as she had clutched her. “Perhaps she did. You don’t know, and I don’t know, and Mr. Masters doesn’t know.” Her voice dropped to a mere breath. “I know what I saw.”
“What did you see, Jennifer?”
The long lashes drooped. From under them something looked, and was gone. Hope-uncertainty-fear? Miss Silver wasn’t sure. Jennifer said,
“You wouldn’t believe if I told you. People don’t-not if they don’t want to.” Then, without any change in her voice, “I can unlock the door into your room. I hid the key because of Miss Ball. This used to be the dressing-room, you know. If the door is open, I don’t expect I shall have another bad dream- shall I? My mother used to let me have a night-light, but he said not to.”
“It is more restful to sleep in the dark.”
Jennifer was getting out of bed. She turned a scornful glance on Miss Silver.
“Is it?” she said.
CHAPTER XVIII
Ledlington has a good many points in common with other county towns. Some of it is old and picturesque, and some of it is not. In the years between the two world wars its approaches have been cluttered up with small houses of every type and shape. When these have been passed there are the tall, ugly houses of the late Victorian period with their basements, their attics, their dismal outlook upon the shrubberies which screen them from the road. Still farther on a beautiful Georgian house or two, or older still, the mellow red brick and hooded porch of Queen Anne’s time-comfortable houses in their day, converted now for the most part to offices and flats. Here the road narrows to the High Street, winding amongst houses which were built in Elizabethan days. New fronts have been added to some, incongruous plate-glass windows front the street. A turning on one side, very competently blocked by the quite hideous monument erected under William IV to a former mayor, leads to the station. Nothing more inconvenient could possibly have been devised, but the answer of course is that nobody devised it. Like nearly everything else in England it just happened that way. Every few years some iconoclast on the council proposes that tne monument should be removed, but nothing is ever done about it. A little farther on, upon the opposite side of the High Street, an even narrower turning conducts to the Market Square, which has a colonnaded walk on two sides, the George Inn on a third, and some really beautiful old houses on the fourth.
Upon this picturesque scene the much more than life-size statue of Sir Albert Dawnish looks down. It has been named by some as the most frightful statue in the British Isles, but the competition is, of course, very strong. Ledlington owes a good deal to Sir Albert, the originator of the Dawnish Quick Cash Stores. His original shop, the cradle of the enormous Dawnish fortune, was for many years a well-known eyesore at the corner of the Square. It was pulled down in 1935 and re-erected where the High Street widens out, but the statue of Sir Albert most unfortunately remains. Of the some twenty bombs which fell in and around the town, not one inflicted so much as a scratch upon his marble trousers.
The bus from Deep End, coming in by the new by-pass, drew up in front of the station at seven minutes to three-an advance on the scheduled time which enabled the driver and conductor to adjourn for refreshment to an adjacent snack-bar. Miss Silver alighted.
At precisely the same moment a man came out of the station. He was of a noticeable and somewhat pitiful appearance, since his head and all one side of his face was heavily bandaged and he leaned upon a stick with a gloved right hand. In spite of his disability and the fact that he was burdened with a small suitcase he got along surprisingly fast and took his way past the Mayor’s monument into the High Street, where he turned to the left, emerging from the bottleneck upon the good wide road of Regency times. One of the large houses fronting upon the street is now the County Bank.
At precisely three minutes to three the bandaged man limped up two shallow steps and pushed open the door of the bank. A girl who was coming out held the door for him and stood aside to let him pass. Then she came down the steps, got into a small car which was standing at the kerb, and started up the engine. Rather a striking looking young person by the accounts of two or three of the people who were passing at the time and who happened to notice her. A baker’s boy was able to state the make of the car and give the first two figures of its number-a not very useful piece of observation, since it merely proved the car to have been a stolen one.
Miss Muffin, on her way to the post with old Mrs. Wotherspoon’s letters, was more helpful.
“Oh, yes, very golden hair. I mean, one couldn’t help wondering whether it was natural, though of course-girls do do such things to their hair nowadays-I mean, quite respectable girls…Oh, yes-very much made-up, Inspector. Eyebrows halfway u
p her forehead-so odd. And the sort of complexion that must take hours to do-if you know what I mean. But quite unnoticeable sort of clothes-just a dark coat and skirt, and a plain felt hat-black, I think, though it might have been a very dark navy-so difficult to tell in a poor light, and the sky was very much overcast at the time.”
Since it appeared that she had merely walked past the car with the letters in her hand, and that she had been hurrying because Mrs. Wotherspoon didn’t care about being left alone in the house, Inspector Jackson thought she had managed to get a considerable eyeful.
Mr. Edward Carpenter’s contribution, though less detailed, was not without value. His eye had not only observed but disapproved. When he was younger he would have known just how to place the lady, but now of course there was no telling- she might be anyone. You couldn’t be sure that your own nieces and cousins wouldn’t turn up looking as if the less said about them the better.
Young Pottinger, on the other hand, was quite appreciative.
“Some blonde! I’m telling you!-what I could see of her, that is. She’d got her hand up doing something to her hat as I passed, and you can’t just stand and gape-well, can you?”
It was not, unfortunately, possible to obtain a statement from the bank manager or from the young clerk, Hector Wayne; any evidence they might have to give being of necessity deferred to a day of final account. At the moment when the bandaged man shut the door of the bank behind him and came down the two shallow steps into the street one of them was already dead and the other drawing his last few laboured breaths.
Miss Muffin, voluble after the event, was sure that she had heard the shots. The baker’s boy had thought there was a motorbike starting up in the Square. Mr. Carpenter enquired how anyone could tell one sound from another in what he termed the damnable babel of the High Street. Young Pottinger said there was a brewer’s dray backing out of Friar’s Cut, which is immediately opposite the bank, and he didn’t suppose anyone could have heard anything. And since the bandaged man had used a silencer, it is quite probable that he was right.
Anna, Where Are You? Page 11
