Miss Silver Comes To Stay (8 page)

He took a sober pace back to Melling. The feeling of fighting time and space was gone. His mind was anchored and safe. Everything on the far side of the storm that had swept him seemed a little unreal, like a dream when you have waked up with the daylight round you. It might have happened a long time ago to someone else. He had Elizabeth again. It seemed the most amazing thing that he could have let her go. He began to plan their life together as he walked.

He came out on to the edge of the Green and saw it like a soft dark smudge under the night sky. There was neither moon nor star, but after the lane with its high banks and tangled hedgerows it seemed by comparison light. He could see the row of cottages away on the far side, and the black, crouched outline of the church. He kept the left-hand path and came up with the Gate House. Light showed through the curtains. Catherine was still up.

Such a little thing can decide so much. If Catherine Welby had gone to bed a little earlier, a lot of things would have been different. The light shining through her pale brocade curtains broke Carr’s train of thought and started another. If Catherine was up, other people would be up. In a flash “other people” became James Lessiter. He could hear Rietta saying, “Mrs. Lessiter never destroyed anything. He’ll have a mass of papers to go through.”

James Lessiter would be up. He could get the whole sordid business between them finished and start fresh. He wasn’t afraid of himself any longer. He could walk in, tell the swine what he thought of him, and walk out again. It was fixed in his mind that he must do that before the whole unhappy business of his marriage could be put away. It had robbed him of every illusion, every happiness. But Marjory was dead. He had to close her account with James Lessiter. As to touching him, he would as soon touch carrion. He turned in between the tall pillars and went up the drive.

The wall-clock at the White Cottage struck its three soft notes. Rietta Cray looked up incredulously. That it should be no more than a quarter to eleven seemed to give the whole lie to time. It was an hour since Fancy had gone up to bed, a quarter over two since Carr had flung out of the house. On any ordinary evening the time would have gone too fast. She worked hard all day, but once the supper things were washed up she could step aside out of this hard post-war world and become a leisured woman, with a concert, a play, waiting for her at the turn of a switch, or a book to take her here and there in time, or anywhere in space. But this evening there were none of these things. No enchantment has power on the racked mind. She did not know when so heavy a fear had weighed her down. It was past all reason, but she could do nothing to lift it. She told herself that she would laugh at it tomorrow, and tomorrow seemed very far away.

The house was dreadfully still. She missed the old dog who had died a month before, friend and companion of fifteen years. She would have to get a puppy, but she had put off for the old dog’s sake. It was too quiet here alone at night.

Then, into the quiet, there came footsteps—not in front from the path skirting the Green, but from the back, coming up the garden. Like Catherine’s the room ran through the house, windows at either end. She heard the click of the garden gate, she heard the steps come right up to the back door and come in. She would have locked the door before she went to bed, but she hadn’t locked it yet. While she was up and about it would never have occurred to her to lock her door.

But the footsteps frightened her now. They had come down through the wood, as she herself had come an hour and a half ago. They had come down from Melling House. They were in the passage now, and the door opened. Carr came in and shut it behind him. He leaned against it and said,

“He’s dead.”

Rietta stood looking at him. His face was pale and stern— dreadfully pale, dreadfully stern. There was no wildness in his eyes. They looked at her, and she looked back, whilst everything in her froze. When she said nothing, Carr raised his voice to her as if she were deaf. He said,

“Do you hear?—James Lessiter is dead.”

She said, “No!”—not because she didn’t believe him, but because she did. It was the last hopeless protest against something too dreadful to be accepted.

His next words cut across the numb surface of her mind like a knife.

“Why did you do it?”

“Carr!”

He left the door and came forward. She saw then that he had the raincoat bundled up on his arm. It was the first moment that she had thought about it since she had dropped it across a chair in the study at Melling House. She thought of it now, and remembered that she had left it there.

Carr thrust it at her.

“What sort of a fool do you think you are to leave it there with his blood on it?”

Rietta lifted her head. It was like a nightmare—nothing made sense. But the numbness was going.

“It’s my own blood. I scratched my wrist going up through the wood.” She turned it for him to see—a scarlet line like a hair, already healing.

Carr gave an angry laugh.

“Don’t be a fool, Rietta—not with me! We’ve got to think.”

“I scratched myself—”

He shook out the coat, held up the right sleeve, and heard her gasp. The cuff was drenched and soaked. The red, wet stain ran up almost to the elbow, the breadth below it was splashed and streaked.

“You scratched your wrist—Oh, my God, talk sense!”

There was a moment when the room shook under her feet and the red stains spread in a milky mist. Then she had hold of herself again and her sight cleared.

“Carr, look at me!”

He was looking.

“And listen! I don’t know anything about this. After you went out I was afraid of what you might do. You’d had a shock. I—well, I was afraid. I took the first coat I touched and ran up the back way to Melling House. When I got there the room was hot—I dropped the coat on a chair and never thought of it again. I talked to James—in the end we quarrelled. No, it wasn’t exactly a quarrel. He said something I resented very much, and I walked out. I never thought about the coat.”

He was holding up the sleeve.

“That’s his blood.”

She said, “I did scratch my wrist—it bled. He lent me his handkerchief—I must have dropped that too.”

“What’s the good of telling me all this came from a scratch on your wrist?”

“I don’t tell you that—it didn’t. But I did catch my wrist on something in the wood. It bled quite a lot for such a little scratch.” A shudder went over her. “Not like that!” She paused for a moment, drawing hard upon her self-control. Then she came up to him. “Carr, put that dreadful thing down and tell me what’s happened. We’re talking in the dark. And for God’s sake tell me the truth, because nothing else is going to be the slightest bit of use.”

He let the coat fall down in a heap on the floor. It lay there with a broken look. But Rietta had no eyes for it. They were fixed on Carr’s hard, dark face. He said,

“Very well, I’ll tell you. When I went out of here I didn’t know what I was doing. I walked myself pretty well off my legs, because if I hadn’t I was going to go up to Melling House and smash James Lessiter. I must have walked for an hour, and I fetched up at Jonathan Moore’s. Elizabeth was there by herself. I stayed there until I’d got hold of myself. We—” his face changed—“she’s taken me back. When I came away I didn’t want to kill him any more—I just wanted to be quit of the whole thing. That’s the truth, Rietta. When I got to the Gate House Catherine’s light was on. I thought, then it wasn’t so late—Lessiter would be up—I could get quit of it all and start fresh. I wasn’t going to touch him. I was going to let him know that I knew, and I was going to tell him what I thought of him. Stupid of me, I expect, but that’s how I saw it. I went up to the house, and the front was all dark. I thought if he was up he’d be in the study, so I went round to the glass door, and found it ajar.”

Rietta took her breath quickly.

“I can’t remember—I can’t remember whether I shut it. I don’t suppose I did—I was too angry—”

He gave a sort of half laugh.

“Angry! I shouldn’t say too much about that!”

“It was about Catherine—it doesn’t matter. Carr, go on.”

“I opened the door and went in. The curtains were drawn behind it. The overhead light was on. He was lying slumped forward over the table with his head smashed in.”

“Carr!”

He nodded.

“It wasn’t pretty. It looked as if he had been sitting in his chair and had been hit from behind. The poker was lying on the hearthrug. There wasn’t any doubt about what he’d been hit with.”

She said, “Horrible!”

“Not nice to look at. Probably instantaneous. You’re not expecting me to be sorry for him, are you? If we’re not careful we may have to be uncommon sorry for ourselves.”

“Go on.”

“I had that cheering thought in the first five seconds. When I saw the raincoat it got a lot stronger. It was turned over, so a bit of the lining showed, and I thought I’d seen the stripe before. I went and had a look and found my initials on the neckband. After that I wiped the handle of the poker with a bloodstained handkerchief which seemed to have dropped on the hearth.”

She shuddered.

“He lent it to me for my wrist. You shouldn’t have wiped the handle.”

He stared at her accusingly.

“Why shouldn’t I have wiped it? If my raincoat was there, someone brought it, didn’t they? It wasn’t I. And that left you.”

“Carr!”

“It’s no use saying ‘Carr!’ If you’d had a row and hit him, it would be a hundred to one you’d rush off and never think about fingerprints. But if it was someone else, and someone clever enough to make use of my raincoat, then it was a hundred to one he’d have dealt with the handle of the poker already—anyhow that’s what I thought at the time. I wiped the handle, and I put the handkerchief on the fire, which was practically choked with ash. I don’t know if it’ll burn or not—it doesn’t really matter. Then I wiped the edge of the door with my own handkerchief, got the raincoat, and came away.”

She took another of those quick breaths.

“You ought to have rung up the police.”

He said, “I may be a fool, but I’m not a damned fool.” Then he picked up the raincoat. “We’ve got to get the blood off this. What’s the best way?”

“Cold water… Carr, I don’t like it. We ought to send for the police—we haven’t done anything wrong.”

He touched her for the first time, taking her shoulder in a bruising grip.

“You’ve got a good headpiece—use it! On the evidence, do you think you could find a dozen people who would believe I didn’t do it?”

“You?”

“Or you.”

A dazed feeling came over her. She put up her hand to her head.

“A dozen people—”

He turned at the door.

“There are twelve people on a jury, Rietta.”

Mr. Stokes started his milk round at seven in the morning. He reached Melling House at twenty past, and found what he afterwards described as a very horrid state of things. The back door stood open. Nothing unusual about that. All in the day’s work that he should take the milk through to the kitchen and say “I don’t mind if I do” when Mrs. Mayhew offered him a cup of tea. But this morning there wasn’t any tea—only Mrs. Mayhew sitting up straight in a kitchen chair with her hands gripping the seat on either side. Looked as if she was afraid she’d fall off if she was to let go. She sat up straight, and looked at Mr. Stokes, but he wouldn’t like to say she saw him—face all white like wet curds, and her eyes set in her head. Mr. Stokes didn’t know when he’d had such a turn.

“Why, Mrs. Mayhew—what’s up?” he said, and didn’t get a word or anything except that stare. He put down the milk on the dresser and looked round for Mayhew, because for certain sure there was something wrong, and he couldn’t go away and leave her like that.

He went across the kitchen to the door on the far side and opened it. There was a darkish bit of passage, and the door of the butler’s pantry standing wide. He could see Mayhew’s shoulder and right arm, and his hand holding the telephone receiver. The hand shook, the arm and shoulder shook. When his head came into the picture it shook too—not as if Mayhew was shaking it, but as if the whole of him was quivering like one of his wife’s jellies. His teeth chattered. Mr. Stokes was of the opinion that nobody couldn’t make head nor tail of what he was trying to say. He was probably right, because it became obvious that he was being adjured to speak up, and to speak distinctly. He said, “I’ll try,” and shook all over again and said, “It’s the shock—I found him—he’s a dreadful sight—oh dear!”

Mr. Stokes had a well founded local reputation as a nosy parker. He could contain himself no longer. It was obvious to the meanest intelligence that Something had Happened. Mr. Stokes did not think at all meanly of his intelligence. It immediately suggested that the Something, if not Murder, was at the very least of it Sudden Death. In a friendly and sociable manner he came up to the shaking Mr. Mayhew and laid an arm across his shoulders.

“What’s up, chum? Who are you talking to—the police? Here, have a drink of water and see what that’ll do.”

Having filled a cup at the tap, he removed the receiver from Mr. Mayhew’s nerveless hand, pressed it to his own ear, and stooped to the mouthpiece.

“ ’Ullo! This is Stokes speaking—milk roundsman. Are you police?”

The sort of voice which suggests a large policeman said it was. It also asked what Mr. Stokes was doing on the line.

“Just happened to come in with the milk, and seeing Mr. Mayhew wasn’t in shape for what you might call making a statement, I’ve given him a drink of water and told him I’ll hold the line. Lenton police station, is it?”

The voice said it was. It also said it wanted Mayhew back on the line.

“Easy does it,” said Mr. Stokes. “Bit of dirty work been going on, if you ask me—Mrs. Mayhew next door to a faint in the kitchen, and this pore chap looking as if someone had got him up to be shot at dawn. He’s spilling half the water I give him instead of getting it down. Here, hold on a jiff and I’ll see if I can get out of him what it’s all about.”

Constable Whitcombe waited impatiently. A number of disconnected and extremely irritating sounds reached him. There was some gasping, some choking, and, superimposed on these, an impression of Mr. Stokes administering a mixture of soothing syrup and encouragement. Then, very distinct and sharp, Mr. Stokes saying, “Gosh!” and then a pause which went on for so long that Constable Whitcombe flashed the exchange and wanted to know why he had been cut off. Exchange said he hadn’t, and was rather crisp about it. After that there were one or two gasps, and then the sound of running feet. Mr. Stokes was back on the line, his voice risen in key and all detachment gone.

“It’s Mr. Lessiter,” he said—“murdered—in his own study! Bin hit over the head with the poker something crool! That’s what Mr. Mayhew was trying to tell you, only he couldn’t get it out, and no wonder. It fair turned me up! I’ve just been along to have a look… No, of course I haven’t touched anything! What d’you take me for? Children five year old know enough not to disturb nothing on the scene of the crime… No, I didn’t touch the door, and didn’t need to. Standing wide open it was, the way Mr. Mayhew left it after he looked in and seen the horrid sight. Couldn’t get back to his pantry fast enough, and I don’t blame him. And if you ask me, the sooner you get someone out here the better… All right, all right, all right, I didn’t say you did! No need to take me up like that—I’m only trying to be helpful.”

Everyone got their milk very late that morning. There was not only the delay caused by the interlude at Melling House, but it was obviously impossible for Mr. Stokes to call anywhere else without making the most of the dramatic fact that he had practically been on the spot when the murder was discovered. By the time he reached Mrs. Voycey’s on the other side of the Green he was not only word-perfect, but he was also in a position to retail some first-hand observations on the manner in which the news had been received.

“Mrs. Welby, she put her head out of the window to ask for another half pint, and when I told her, she must have sat down sudden, because there she was one minute and there she wasn’t the next, so I thought maybe she’d gone off in a faint with the shock. I called up to the window and asked if she was all right, and she looks out again as white as death and says, ‘Are you sure?’ And when I told her I seen him with my own eyes she says, ‘Oh, my God—what a horrible thing!’ ”

Variants of this remark seem to have been made at every house. To his own regret, and to that of all his listeners, he had no knowledge of how the White Cottage had reacted, since he had most unfortunately delivered the milk at Miss Rietta Cray’s before going up to Melling House.

Cecilia Voycey’s stout, elderly housekeeper listened with the same amiable interest which she had accorded during the past year to the birth of twins in the Stokes family and the decease of an uncle of Mrs. Stokes who had married for the fourth time in his eighty-ninth year and left his house and a nice little sum in the bank to the designing widow. “Yellow hair, and makes out she’s under thirty!” had been Mr. Stokes’s embittered conclusion. Upon all these items of news Mrs. Crook had had the same comment to make—a slow “Fancy that!” followed by “Who’d ha thought it!” The murder of James Lessiter provoked her to no higher flights, but having absorbed all that Mr. Stokes could tell her and shut the back door after him, she went through into the dining-room where Mrs. Voycey and Miss Silver were partaking of breakfast. With slow and lumbering accuracy she repeated her garnered news.

“Mr. Stokes, he waited till the police came. He don’t know if there’s anything missing, but the grate was fair choked with burned paper, and the poor gentleman sitting there with his head smashed in, and the poker on the hearthrug. Mr. Stokes was able to leave us two pints this morning, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep it up.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

Mrs. Voycey waved away the milk.

“Good gracious, Bessie—don’t talk about food! Have the police got any clue?”

“Not that they told Mr. Stokes. There was a Constable, and an Inspector, and a Superintendent, taking photographs and fingerprints and all sorts when he come away. He did say it looked like someone had tried to burn the poor gentleman’s will. All scorched down one side it was.”

“His will!” exclaimed Mrs. Voycey in what was almost a scream.

Mrs. Crook gazed at her in a ruminative manner and said placidly,

“They do say that everything was left to Miss Rietta Cray.”