Pilgrim’s Rest (22 page)

There was one of those crowded silences. Four people’s thoughts, shocked into immediate and vital activity, met and clashed there. Then Judy moved, and there came past her into the room a tall, dark girl in a fur coat with a small black hat tilted at a becoming angle. The coat was squirrel, the hat undeniably smart, and the girl would have been very pretty indeed if she had not been so dreadfully pale. She came straight up to Frank Abbott, put out both hands to him, and said,

“Oh, Mr. Frank-is it true about my father? They told me in Ledlington.”

He took the hands, held them for a moment, and said,

“I’m afraid it is.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes. We thought that you were too.”

She drew her hands away.

“My father wanted it that way.”

“He knew you were alive?”

She had very dark blue eyes. The long black lashes had darkened them still more. They lifted now. She looked full at Frank and said,

“Oh, yes, he knew.” Her voice was soft and pretty, with no trace of country accent. On those last words it was tinged with bitter feeling.

She turned to Randall March.

“I beg your pardon-I should have spoken to you. But I am sure you will understand. I have known Mr. Frank since I was a little girl, and I have just heard of my father’s death-it was nice to see a friendly face. But of course I know you too-by sight. I used to work in Ledlington.”

Her manner was perfectly simple and direct. In a situation beset with embarrassments she appeared to be unaware of them. When March asked her to sit down she did so. When he explained Miss Silver her faint smile and the slight inclination of her head had a natural grace. When he enquired if she had something to say to him she lifted her eyes to his face and said,

“Yes, that is why I’ve come.”

Away to her left Frank Abbott produced writing-pad and pencil. Above her knitting Miss Silver’s eyes were bright and intent. March said.

“Well, Miss Robbins, what have you to say?”

Those very black lashes dropped. She said,

“A great deal. But it isn’t very easy to begin. Perhaps I ought to tell you that I am not Miss Robbins. I am married, and-Superintendent March, will it be necessary to bring my married name into it?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what you have to say.”

She drew a long breath.

“It has nothing to do with my husband.”

“Does he know you are here?”

She looked up again at that, quick and startled.

“Oh, yes-he knows everything. We talked it over. It was he who said that I must come, but it is I who don’t want to bring his name in because it might hurt him in his profession. He is a doctor.”

March said gravely,

“I can’t make any promises-you must understand that. Will you tell me what it is that you and your husband thought I ought to know? I suppose it concerns the death of Henry Clayton?”

The colour ran up into her face and died again. Just for a moment she had the beauty which takes you unawares. No one of the other three people in the room was insensible to it.

She said, “Yes.” And then, “I was here that night.”

The few quietly spoken words produced almost as vivid a shock as her entrance had done. Frank stared. Miss Silver’s needles halted for a moment. March said,

“You were here on the night that Henry Clayton was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“You really mean that?”

She smiled very faintly.

“Oh, yes, I really mean it.”

“Do you mean that you were present when he was-murdered?”

She caught her breath.

“Oh, no-not that!” Another of those quick breaths, and then, “Superintendent March, may I tell it to you from the beginning? You won’t understand unless I do.”

“Yes, certainly-tell it your own way.”

She had been leaning towards him over the table. Now she sat up straight, unfastening her coat and throwing it back.

The dress beneath was of dark red wool, plain and good. She had taken off her gloves and put them down on the table. Her bare hands lay in her lap, the left hand uppermost. Over the platinum circle on the wedding-finger was a fine old-fashioned ruby and diamond ring. Mabel Robbins looked down at it and began to speak in a low, steady voice,

“I expect you know why my father wanted me to be dead. He was a very proud man, and he thought I had disgraced him. Henry Clayton made love to me, and I fell in love with him. I don’t want to excuse myself, but I loved him very much, and I don’t want to blame him, because he never pretended that he was going to marry me.” She looked up with a startling effect of truthfulness. “He isn’t here to speak for himself, so I want it to be quite clear that he didn’t deceive me. He never promised me anything. When I knew that I was going to have a child he provided for me and for the baby. I wrote to tell my mother that I was all right and well looked after, but she never got the letter. My father burnt it.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me, what a very high-handed proceeding!”

Mabel looked across at her for a moment and said briefly, “He was like that.”

Then she went on.

“I didn’t know about the letter till afterwards. I only knew they didn’t write. When my baby was a year old I wrote again and sent a snapshot of her. She is very sweet. I thought if they saw how sweet she was… Well, my father came up-he came to see me. It-it was quite dreadful. There was a very bad air raid. He wouldn’t go to the shelter, or let us go. He sat there and told me what I was to do, and made me put my hand on the Bible and swear to it.” She was looking at March now, her eyes big and full on his face. “It doesn’t seem reasonable now to think I promised what I did, but what with the noise of the guns, and the bombs coming down, and my father looking like the day of judgment, I did it. I was to be dead, and my baby too, so as not to disgrace him any more. I wasn’t to write, or to come, or to do anything to show that I was alive. He said he would curse me if I did, and curse my baby. And he said it would be happier for my mother if she thought I was dead, because then she would stop worrying. So I promised, and he went back and told Mr. Roger, and Mr. Pilgrim, and my mother that my baby and I had been killed in the raid-he had seen us dead. Mr. Roger told Henry, and Henry came to see me and make a joke of it. We weren’t living together any more, but he would come and see me once in a while. He had begun to take a good deal of notice of the baby. He used to say she was like his mother and she was going to be a beauty.”

She paused for a moment, as if it was hard to go on. Then she said,

“He stayed longer than usual, and we talked about a lot of things, but in the end he went away without saying what he had come to say. And when he had gone away he sat down and wrote it to me-I got the letter next day. He was going to marry Miss Lesley Freyne in a month’s time, and he wasn’t going to see us again.”

There was a long pause. She looked down at her ring. The light on it brought up the brightness of the diamonds, the deep colour of the ruby-deep, steady, shining, like the lights of home. Presently she said in a low voice,

“I don’t want anyone to blame him. He was getting married, and he didn’t think it was right to go on seeing me. Only when it happened I didn’t feel that I could bear it. At first I didn’t do anything-I didn’t feel as if I could. I lost a lot of time that way. Then I wrote and said I wanted to see him to say good-bye, and he wrote back and said much better not, it would only hurt us both, and he was going down to Pilgrim’s Rest.”

She put up her hand to her head for a moment and let it fall again-a pretty, well-cared-for hand with tinted nails.

“I think I was crazy, or I would never have done what I did. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t get it off my mind that I must, must see him again.” She turned from March to look, not at Frank Abbott whom she had known since she was a little girl, but at Miss Silver sitting there knitting in her low Victorian chair. “You know how it is when there’s anything on your mind like that-you don’t think about anything else-you can’t-it just crowds everything out. I was working, you know. I used to leave my little Marion with my landlady. She was very good. Well, when I got away from the office that day-the day I made up my mind I couldn’t bear it any longer, I’d got to see him-I just went to the station and took the first train to Ledlington. It seemed as if it was the only thing to do. I didn’t plan it at all, I just went. Can you understand that?”

Miss Silver looked at her kindly and said, “Yes.”

She turned back to March.

“There was an air raid, and the train was delayed. When I got to Ledlington the last bus had gone, so I walked. It was a good bit after ten before I got here. I heard the quarter strike on the church clock as I was coming into the village, and it wasn’t until then that it came into my head to think what I was going to do next. You see, I had only been thinking about getting here and seeing Henry. I hadn’t ever stopped to think how I was going to manage it.”

March said, “I see.” And then, “What did you do?”

“I went and stood under the yew tree at Mrs. Simpson’s gate just across the road from here. It casts quite a deep shadow. It was bright moonlight, and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I stood there for a long time, but I couldn’t think of any way to get to Henry. I didn’t dare go up to the house because of my father. I couldn’t think of anything. I heard the half hour strike, and I just went on standing there. And then the door of the glass passage opened and Henry came out. I could see him quite plainly because of the moon. He hadn’t any coat or scarf or hat on, and he was smiling to himself, and all at once I knew that he was going to her-to Miss Freyne. I had taken just one step to go to him, but I couldn’t take another. It came to me then that it wasn’t any use. I let him go. Then, all in a minute, someone came after him out through that glass door-”

“You saw someone come out of this house and follow Clayton? Was it your father?”

“No. But of course you would think that. My husband said you were bound to think it was my father. But it wasn’t. It was a woman, in one of those Chinese coats. The moon was so bright that I could see the embroidery on it as she ran after Henry. She caught him up just by the gate into the stable yard and they stood talking for a moment. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could see his face when he turned round. He looked angry, but he went back with her. They went into the house.”

March leaned forward.

“Would you know the woman again? Did you see her face?”

“Oh, yes, I’d know her.” Her voice was tired and a little contemptuous. “I knew her then. Henry talked about her quite a lot when she first came to Pilgrim’s Rest to nurse Mr. Jerome. He said she was the most sympathetic woman he had ever met. He showed me a snapshot he had taken of her with his aunts. After that he stopped talking about her, and-I wondered.”

“You say you recognized her from the snapshot you had seen?”

“Yes. It was Miss Day-Miss Lona Day.”

Frank Abbott took a fleeting glance at Miss Silver. He could discern no change in her expression. Little Roger’s sock showed nearly an inch of grey ribbing. She drew on the ball of wool, the needles clicked.

March said, “Is that all, Miss Robbins?”

She looked up with an effect of being startled.

“Oh, no. Shall I-shall I go on?”

“If you please.”

She kept her eyes on his face.

“I went after them into the house. You see, I knew that they hadn’t locked the door, because from where I was I could see right into the passage and they didn’t stop at all. They went right on into the house, and I went after them.”

“What did you mean to do?”

She said as simply as a child,

“I didn’t know-I didn’t think at all-I just followed them. When I got into the hall the light was on. I looked to the left, and the dining-room door was still moving. I went up to it, and I could hear them talking. The door hadn’t latched. I pushed it and went in.” She stopped, leaned forward over the table, and said, “You’ve been in the dining-room-I don’t suppose anything has been changed there. There’s a big screen by the door-Miss Netta always said there was a draught from the hall. Well, I stood behind the screen and I looked round the end of it.”

“Yes?”

“They were over by the big sideboard, Henry on the nearer side where the door goes through to the passage where the lift is. She was farther away on the other side. There was only the one light on, over the sideboard. I could see them, but they wouldn’t see me as long as I was careful. I heard Henry say, ‘My dear girl, what’s the good? Better go off to bed.’ And Miss Day said, ‘Are you in such a hurry to go to her that you can’t spare five minutes to say good-bye? That’s all I want.’ ”

She looked at Miss Silver again. She was deadly pale.

“When she said that, it sounded like all the things I’d been saying in my own mind. I began to thank God I hadn’t said them to Henry. He hadn’t any reason, and he never would have any reason, to look at me the way he was looking at her. She cried out, and she whipped round and snatched one of the knives off the wall-you know there are a lot of them there, put together in a pattern-a trophy, I think they call it. She snatched the knife, and she called out, ‘All right, I’ll kill myself, if that’s what you want!’ And Henry stood there with his hands in his pockets and said, ‘Don’t be a damned fool, Lona!’ ”

March said quickly, “You heard him use her name?”

“Yes.”

“Are you prepared to swear to that? You will have to do so.”

“I know.”

“Go on, please.”

She was looking at him again.

“Henry said, ‘Put that knife back and come here! If you want to say good-bye according to all the forms, you shall, but it mustn’t take more than ten minutes. Come along, my dear!’ He held out his hand and he smiled at her with his eyes. She said, ‘All right-that’s all I want,’ and she turned round and went up to the wall and put up her hand to the trophy as if she was putting the knife back. But she didn’t put it back-she put it in the pocket of the Chinese coat.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Those coats are not made with pockets, Miss Robbins.”