Eternity Ring (6 page)

“Well, Miss Stokes—what about it?”

Some of the refinement slipped.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve no objection to repeating it. Let me put it quite simply. You didn’t walk across that ditch into the wood, and I’m prepared to swear you didn’t jump it. How did you get there?”

She was looking at him now, angrily, uneasily.

“How did I get there?”

“Yes.”

She tried to laugh.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”

The tone was intended to be provocative. It failed before his ice-cold stare.

He said, “Very much.” And then, “Are you going to tell me? I think you’d better. This is rather a serious matter, you know. Anyone who is not implicated in a crime is naturally willing to assist the police.” He smiled again, this time in a more human manner.

Mary Stokes put up a hand to the pearl necklace, displaying five blood-red nails and a turquoise ring.

“Well, if you want to know, I went into the wood farther back.”

“How much farther back?”

“Oh, a good bit.”

“You would still have to cross the ditch.”

“Well then, I wouldn’t! Because there isn’t any ditch before you get down into the dip—at least nothing to speak of. And it’s dry—it wouldn’t show footprints.”

He wrote that down. Mary watched him. Then she had to meet the pale stare again.

“You thought that out very nicely. But I’m afraid it makes trouble for you in another direction. It explains why there are no footprints of yours going into the wood, but it doesn’t explain why you went into the wood at that particular spot. You said in your statement, and you have just told me all over again, that you ran into the wood because you were so frightened that you didn’t know what you were doing. The reason you were so frightened was because you had heard a dragging noise. Are you sticking to that?”

Her hand was pressing down upon the pearls, and upon the upward surge of her breath.

“Of course I am!”

His eyebrows rose.

“I haven’t measured the distance from the top of the dip to where you ran on to the path, but I should say it was all of two hundred yards. Are you going to say that you walked all that way along the edge of the wood in the direction of the noise which had frightened you so much?”

Miss Silver saw her pull at the pearls and tangle them.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“It seems a little strange.”

She flared up suddenly.

“What’s strange about it? Anything’s strange if you like to make it out that way! There wasn’t anything strange at all! I heard the noise like I said, and I ran off the road where the wood begins, before there’s any ditch. Well then, I stood a bit and listened, and the noise had stopped, so I went on again, but I kept in among the bushes just in case. I’m pretty good in the dark, and I thought if it was anyone who’d had a bit too much to drink, well, I could always dodge him in the wood. When I got down into the dip I heard the noise again, so I just stood still where I was.”

“I see. So you’re good in the dark—”

“Nothing wrong about that, is there?”

“Oh, no—very useful. You stood there and watched someone drag a body out of the wood. If you’re so good in the dark you’d be able to see whether he was dragging it, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I seem to remember you being a little inclined to hedge. Well, what about it—was he dragging her, or wasn’t he?”

“That’s what it sounded like. I said he might have been carrying her, and so he might.”

That light stare of his persisted.

“All right—he was dragging her, or he was carrying her. Which side of you was he—between you and the village?”

She hesitated, angry and confused.

“I tell you it was dark!”

“But you’re good in the dark—you’ve just said so. Look here, Miss Stokes, you were coming from Tomlin’s Farm and you were on the way to the village. You simply must know which side of you this man came out of the bushes—behind you, or in front of you—between you and the farm, or between you and Deeping.”

“It was between me and the village. You get me all confused.”

His voice took an ironic inflection.

“I should be sorry to do that. But if he came out between you and the village he must have crossed the ditch just where it’s wettest, at the bottom of the dip. I’m telling you that no one could have got across that ditch either dragging or carrying a body without leaving footprints—it couldn’t have been done.”

Her fingers were motionless, pressing down upon the pearls. She said nothing. He went on.

“You said in your statement that he put her down on the path, got out a torch, and put the light on her.”

She gave a slight shiver.

“Yes, he did.”

“You saw what it was he had been carrying—or dragging?”

She looked up and nodded. Miss Silver, watching, saw the angry expression change to a sick remembering one. But there was something else as well. The hand clenched on the pearls relaxed—came back to join the other in her lap.

Mary Stokes was suddenly full of words. Her breath hurried, she couldn’t get them out fast enough.

“Oh, it was horrible! She had been hit over the head—a lot of light hair, and blood on it, and her eyes open. That’s how I knew she was dead. Her eyes were open, and he flashed the torch in them—and they never moved. So I knew she was dead. And there was the earring, catching up the light—a real ring set all round with diamonds.”

“What size was the ring? I’d like the most exact description you can give me.”

“About the size of a wedding-ring—half an inch or three-quarters—I don’t know, I’ve never measured one, but that’s what it looked like. And there was only the one, because he turned her over and looked and the other one was gone, and he went on looking for it, running his fingers through her hair.”

She shuddered uncontrollably. “I tell you it turned me up! I keep coming awake in the night and seeing it!”

For the moment the careful refinement was all gone. It was a scared country girl remembering something which had sent her screaming and running to beat on Miss Alvina’s door. She took a sobbing breath and said,

“If he’d caught me spying on him, I’d have been the next. The first minute he went back into the wood I ran for my life.”

Miss Silver gave her slight habitual cough.

“A truly terrifying experience. It is not surprising that you should find it painful to recall. But you will, I am sure, do all you can to assist Sergeant Abbott. The man who is capable of such a crime should not be at large. He may commit others. Now I wonder—you say that the stones in the earring caught the light as the beam of the torch went to and fro?”

Mary stared, on her guard against a new questioner. She said,

“Yes.”

“Then you will have noticed whether the blood on the hair was wet.”

“I didn’t.”

Frank Abbott said,

“Just try and think. It’s important.”

She shook her head.

“I wasn’t thinking of whether anything was wet or dry—I was thinking that she’d been murdered and as likely as not it was going to be my turn next.”

They got no more from her.

As they drove back from the farm, Miss Silver observed the scenery with interest. Undulating common land to the right and fields to the left under a cloudy sky. The air less cold than it had been for some days past—oh, yes, decidedly less cold, and with a touch of damp in it. It occurred to her that the afternoon was likely to bring rain.

Frank Abbott stopped the car where the trees began on the left-hand side of the road.

“That’s where she says she went into the wood. Impossible to say whether she did or not. You see there’s no ditch to speak of, and it’s all as dry as a bone—it gets the wind across those fields.”

Miss Silver alighted from the car and stood there looking at the scene. The wood was quite unfenced and the undergrowth very moderate. Mary Stokes’ account of her actions was a perfectly credible one. She could have crossed into the wood and walked down its edge very nearly as easily as she could have walked down the path. Frank walked down it now, looking about him as he went.

When he returned, to find Miss Silver as he had left her, he could only say,

“Well, she could have done it.”

She said in a thoughtful voice, “Oh, yes.” And then, “I should like to get the geography a little clearer. There is, for instance, a track here between the field and the edge of the wood. Where does it lead to?”

He looked at her sharply.

“It comes out in what is called the Lane, which runs up from the village past the back of Abbottsleigh and the Grange—that’s Mark Harlow’s place.”

“The Lane runs between those two estates and this wood?”

“It runs between Abbottsleigh and the wood. Uncle Reg’s land stops where we’re standing now. The fields on our left are Harlow property, and the Grange is back there behind them.”

“On the other side of the Lane?”

“On the other side of the Lane. Deepside, Hathaway’s place, is farther along still, but the driving-road to Tomlin’s Farm cuts between Deepside and the Grange.”

“Does the Lane go on?”

“Yes, it goes all the way to Lenton. It’s the old direct way. The new road wasn’t at all popular when it was made, because it took a bit off the frontage of all those three properties. I believe my great-grandfather cursed the place down. He had to rebuild his lodge.”

Miss Silver was looking thoughtful.

“Dead Man’s Copse, then, is an irregular rectangle bounded by this field track, the track over which we have driven, the village street, and the Lane at the back of Abbottsleigh.”

He smiled at her.

“Answer adjudged correct.”

“And the Forester’s House—is it nearer to this edge of the wood, or to the Lane?”

“Oh, a good bit nearer to the Lane—and definitely nearer to this end of the wood than to the village.”

“Then I would propose, my dear Frank, that we find our way to it along the field track.”

He stood looking at her.

“Now what have you got in your mind?”

She smiled.

“You asked me that before.”

“And got no answer.”

“Well, this time you shall have one. I have in mind its usual furniture—a considerable variety of thoughts, some of them quite unrelated, others in a very elementary state of combination. There are only two which I can at the moment offer for your consideration, and you will doubtless have already thought of them for yourself. In the first case, Mary Stokes is lying when she says that she stood on the edge of the bushes in the dip and witnessed the carrying or dragging of a dead body from the wood on to the path. You brought that out very clearly when you questioned her. But I think it is equally clear that when she spoke of the beam passing to and fro over that poor murdered girl she was describing something which she had actually witnessed. I feel quite sure that every detail of that description is correct. She did see a murderer searching for the lost earring in terror lest it should have dropped in some place where its discovery might betray him.”

“You think she was speaking the truth?”

“I am convinced of it. She witnessed that scene, and the shock and horror of it sent her running for safety in a blind panic. It was only when she had reached that safety that some other consideration operated to prevent her telling all the truth. She sobbed out her story of the terrible thing she had seen, but she lied as to the locality in which she had seen it. The tragic scene took place, but not on the track through Dead Man’s Copse.”

He eyed her quizzically.

“I expect you’re right—you always are. Though if it wasn’t for Louise Rogers, I’d be inclined to think Miss Mary Stokes a more consistent liar than you do. It’s Louise Rogers and her eternity earrings that make me give her the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise I should conclude that she had just invented the whole thing.

Miss Silver coughed in a hortatory manner.

“No, Frank—she had seen what she was describing. It was something which had frightened her almost out of her senses. The sense of fear and shock were quite unmistakable. Did you not notice how all her affectations fell away? The girl who said ‘I tell you it turned me up’ was telling the truth.”

He nodded.

“Yes, I noticed that. I expect you’re right. Well, where do we go from here?”

If he intended the question metaphorically, it was taken in a perfectly literal manner.

“I think to the Forester’s House.”

“Now?”

“I think so.”

She began to walk along the track between the field and the wood.

After returning to the car to remove and pocket the switch-key Frank caught her up.

“I could have driven you round by the village and up the Lane.”

“Thank you, but I am an excellent walker. The air is really extremely refreshing.”

After a moment he said,

“And what do you expect to find at the Forester’s House?”

“We shall see when we get there.”

He laughed.

“You wouldn’t care to give any idea of what you expect?”

She shook her head.

“It is wiser not to indulge in expectations. There are, of course, certain possibilities.”

“As what?”

“Mary Stokes must have had a reason for transferring the terrible scene which she had witnessed from the place where it really happened to the place where she said it happened. This reason must have been extremely strong—so strong, in fact, that even in the midst of blind panic it operated to prevent a disclosure of the actual spot where the tragedy took place. What would you deduce from that?”

He gave vent to a slight whistle.

“You mean it was somewhere she hadn’t any business to be.”

“Can you explain it in any other way? I cannot.”

“But—the Forester’s House—”

“Consider what we know of the girl’s character. She has been staying here not from choice but because she had to. She is a town girl by choice and preference. It is quite obvious that she would find life very dull at Tomlin’s Farm. When that sort of young woman is dull some mischief can usually be found for her idle hands to do, and it is sadly apt to take the form of a man. I think you would do well to enquire whether there has been any gossip of this sort about Mary Stokes.”

“You think she was meeting someone at the Forester’s House?”

“I think she may have been. Pray consider how convenient a place of assignation it would be. She could reach it by this path, and if anyone saw her, she would be going through to the Lane and so down into Deeping. The house itself is shunned by the village people.”

“Wouldn’t she shun it too?”

“She is a town girl, smart and sophisticated. She would, I think, despise the old village tales, and, as you will have observed, she is neither a sensitive nor an imaginative type. Besides, a young woman who is going to meet a man isn’t thinking about things that happened two hundred years ago. She is thinking about herself—and the man.”

Frank Abbott nodded.

“What about the man—is he too much in love to bother about local superstitions, or what?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Two possibilities present themselves. There must, you see, be some reason why he cannot meet her openly. If it were a case of the ordinary village courtship, they could walk out together, and there would be no need for concealment. But the facts require a very strong reason for concealment. The man may be married, or he may belong to such a different class that Mr. and Mrs. Stokes would be scandalized by his association with their niece. Then what could be more convenient for a meeting-place than a deserted house avoided by everyone?”

Frank Abbott laughed.

“Well, you’ve explained that Mary didn’t avoid it because (a) she was tough, (b) she didn’t really belong to the neighbourhood, and (c) she was in love.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I do not think that I should call it love, Frank.”

“Probably not. But putting that on one side, I suppose you would say that we must look for a man who is also tough, and who doesn’t really belong to Deeping?”

“I am inclined to think so.”

“Well, there is the Lane in front of us, and here is what looks like a way into the wood.”

The undergrowth was not very thick at this end of the Copse— a few hazels, a holly-bush or two, an occasional trail of bramble, and a great deal of ivy. It was plain that no forester had kept an eye on the timber for a very long time. Old trees done to death by the ivy had come down in many a winter storm to rot where they lay. Others stood as sheer hulks in a winding-sheet of green, their branches gone, their hollow trunks full of rotting leaves. Presently the bushes thinned away to what was almost a clearing—a most desolate place with a great humped mass of yew on either side of what had perhaps once been a gate. And beyond it, standing amongst rank high grass and nettles, the Forester’s House.

Frank Abbott whistled.

“Well, I can think of places where I’d rather meet a girl,” he said.

Miss Silver’s reply startled him. In all sobriety she enquired,

“Can you think of a better place for a murder?”

He whistled again. Before the sound had ceased her hand was on his arm.

“See, Frank—I was right. Here are her footprints in that damp patch—running footprints.”

They stood looking at the marks—three or four of them, very clear and distinct, the deeply impressed prints of the fore part of a woman’s shoe. The damp patch of ground which had received and retained them was some dozen feet across, but the heel of that shoe had never touched it once. It was plain to see that the girl whose footprints they were had been in headlong flight.

Frank said under his breath,

“Yes, you’re right. And the way they’re pointing, she must have run straight through the wood and out of it where the footprints are in the ditch. I’ll follow up the direction this afternoon with Smith. We may be able to trace her right away through the wood.” He straightened up. “Well, what do you want to do now? I’m not at all sure you hadn’t better let me take you home and ring up Smith. It looks as if there might be something quite nasty inside that unpleasant domicile.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“My dear Frank, I have not the slightest intention of going home. Far too much time has been wasted already. If anything remains to be found, there should be no further delay in finding it.”

They walked between the two great masses of yew and up what had once been a nagged path, cushioned over now with thick-growing moss and slippery to the foot. The house rose square before them, its roof still intact, windows to right and left of the door, two above and two below, and two small gables over all. Whether the legend of Edward Brand and the mob that had come witch-hunting here getting on for a couple of hundred years ago was true or not, it was a fact that there was no glass in any of the windows. They stared horridly, and gave the house the look of a dead, eyeless thing. One on the left appeared to be roughly shuttered. Frank remembered that, according to the story, an angry village had wrenched the doors from their hinges and gone away to hunt for Edward Brand and found him hanged and dead. The front door of what had been his house stood there, hingeless still. No, not stood, for it leaned at a crazy tilt, wedged between lintel and jamb. Whether by accident or design, after all these generations it still did its office—if it be the office of a door to deny entrance to the house it has been set to guard. If the story was to be believed, Edward Brand’s door had never been wont to open in welcome to any living soul. It was not to be opened now. Gape it might, between sill and lintel, between jamb and jamb, but the weatherproof oak was sound, and budge it would not.

Miss Silver stood back and regarded the depressing spectacle. Inevitably, she produced a quotation from her favourite poet, the great Laureate of the Victorian era.

“ ‘Portions and parcels of the dreadful past,’ ” she observed.

To which Frank Abbott replied with cheerful irreverence,

“Some parcel—isn’t it!”

They went round to the back, and found an empty rectangle half hidden by crowding bushes. Frank went in first and held them aside for Miss Silver to follow.

“Take care—there may be holes in the floor.”

But the floor was stone, laid in flags like the path. The place they had come into was a kitchen—cobwebs hanging from the beams, a mass of old rubbish mouldering under the dust of years.

But there was no dust on the flagstones between the door of their entry and the empty doorway opposite. For a three foot width the stones had been swept clean. They followed the swept path to a passage so dark that Frank fished out a torch and switched it on. Narrow and bare, the passage ran to the front door, with a stair going up no more than a yard from the entrance between a stone wall on one side and rough panelling on the other. There was no dust here either, but on the stair it lay as soft and thick as a carpet. Two narrow doorways in the space between the staircase and the wedged front door, one to the right and one to the left—one open, the jamb sagging where the door had been torn away, the other with its door intact and latched. When Frank Abbott lifted the latch, taking care not to touch it with his bare hand, it swung in easily enough.