Pilgrim’s Rest (25 page)

Lona Day drove on until she came to what she was looking for, the right-hand turn which would take her back to the Coulton road. She had to get back to it because she was going to Coulton, but she had not felt able to risk taking the right-hand fork under the eyes of the helpful young men who had got the car out of the ditch for her.

She was quite sure now that Judy had ditched it on purpose. Every time she thought of it she felt a burning surprise and anger. That the girl should have dared, and having dared, that she should have brought it off! She ought to have known that she hadn’t a chance. She ought at this moment to be dead with a bullet in her brain.

She wasn’t dead. She was alive, with a tattling tale to tell. Never mind, Lona would get away in spite of her. She hadn’t killed four men, to be beaten by a tattling girl. She had made her plans. Her new name, her new place in the world, were waiting for her. Once she had slipped into them, the police might whistle but they wouldn’t find her. In a way it was gratifying that they should know how clever she had been, and how she had diddled everyone for three years.

She went on slowly and carefully past the turning until she came to the narrow lane on the left which ran across the fields to Ledham. If she left the car just beyond it, the police would think she had gone that way. She drew up by the side of the road and walked quickly back to the right-hand turn. A mile to the Coulton road, and three miles on-farther than she cared to walk, but not too far for safety. When she was in sight of the Coulton road she would make her adjustments. A pity about her fur coat, but it would be the first thing in the description they were sure to circulate.

Twenty minutes later she was stripping it off and pushing it well down inside a hollow tree. Her hat followed it. Just a bit of luck that the moon had come out, for it wouldn’t have been at all easy to find the tree in the dark. Seven-no eight months since they had picnicked here and pushed the sandwich papers down out of sight. She felt cold without her coat, though the coat and skirt she was wearing was a thick one. Thick and new-no one at Pilgrim’s Rest had ever seen it. The moonlight robbed it of its colour, but in the day it was a good shade of sapphire which took the green out of her eyes and made them look blue.

She found a comb in her bag and proceeded to deal with her hair, taking it up straight, away from face and neck and ears, before slipping on the dark wig which changed her quite beyond belief. Demure, smooth waves coming down to a roll at the back. Not nearly so ornamental as the chestnut curls, but oh, so respectable.

The woman who came out of the wood on to the Coulton road was no longer Lona Day. A short three miles lay between her and safety.

Frank Abbott was taking tea with Miss Silver. There was a cosy fire. A comfortable twilight veiled the Soul’s Awakening and the Monarch of the Glen. The rows of silver photograph frames which enshrined past clients and their babies caught a reflected glow from the firelight.

Miss Silver, neat and smiling, dispensed tea from a small Victorian teapot with a strawberry on the lid. Her tea-set, of the same date, displayed a pattern of moss roses. Since Emma never broke anything, it remained as she had inherited it from her great aunt, Louisa Bushell, that formidable pioneer of women’s rights in an age which saw no reason why they should have any, since a gentleman could always be relied on to give a lady his seat. The tea-set lacked one cup of its original twelve, this having been broken by Miss Bushell’s vicar, who set it down on its saucer with a slam at the climax of his argument that the original misdemeanour of Eve entailed continuous subjection upon her daughters. There were, however, a few occasions when Miss Silver entertained so large a party as to be reminded of this painful incident.

Frank now looked gloomily at her across the cups and said,

“She’s done the Macbeth act-made herself air.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Not quite an accurate statement, I think. She has merely become someone else. You will remember I said all along that there was a very clever, unscrupulous mind at work. I feel convinced from what Miss Day said to Judy that she had very carefully prepared a line of retreat.”

Frank continued to look gloomy.

“Well, we can’t pick up any trace of her in Coulton, Ledstow, or Ledham. No one answering to her description boarded a train at any of these places, and unless she got a lift in a car she couldn’t have got any farther afield. It was too late for her to catch a bus.”

“I do not imagine that the description which has been circulated will correspond with her present appearance. Our sex has an advantage over yours when it comes to a change of identity. Different colouring, another way of doing the hair, will completely alter a woman’s appearance. At Pilgrim’s Rest Miss Day wore green or black, both of which emphasized the red in her hair and the greenish tint of her eyes. You should look for someone with brown or dark hair, and I should conjecture that she would be wearing blue. The hair might of course be grey, but I fancy she has rather too much vanity for that.”

“I wonder who she’ll murder next,” said Frank Abbott.

Miss Silver lifted the lid of the teapot and added a little more hot water to the brew before she answered.

“She will be very careful for a time at any rate.” After which she enquired brightly, “And how is Judy? I hope she is now none the worse for her very alarming experience.”

Frank leaned forward and set down his cup upon the tray. Perhaps he was afraid of emulating the vicar.

“She’s staying on at Pilgrim’s Rest,” he said in rather a jerky voice. “You wouldn’t think she’d want to, but she does.”

“She gave her evidence remarkably well at the inquest. And so did that poor girl Mabel-Mrs. Macdonald. I was much relieved that it was not considered necessary to publish her married name. Whilst one cannot approve of her conduct with Henry Clayton, one must remember that she was a young girl, and he by all accounts a particularly fascinating man. Inexperienced young women are sadly liable to be carried away by specious arguments on the subject of free union and companionate marriage. They fail to realize until too late that though civilized marriage laws may sometimes prove irksome, they nevertheless exist for the protection of woman and the family.”

Frank’s gloom relaxed a little. Maudie discoursing upon the Moral Law enthralled him. He accepted another cup of tea and returned to Judy.

“Lesley and Jerome are getting married in about a month. Judy is going to stay on with them. There’s been a frightful pow-wow about where they were to live and what was to happen to the aunts. I don’t think Lesley was a bit keen on Pilgrim’s Rest, and I don’t blame her, but Jerome dug his toes in. So they’re going to have six assorted orphans in the attics with Lesley’s matron to look after them. That ought to lay the ghosts. The aunts are going to stay put. Lesley and Jerome will have the other wing where his room is now. Meals together, but separate sitting-rooms. Judy will have Penny and stay on. Ditto Gloria. Mrs. Robbins, who has taken a new lease of life, says she’ll stay and cook. She doesn’t hold with going to live with a married daughter, sensible woman. A let-off for Macdonald, who nobly offered to have her. So that places everyone. Happy ending.” His voice was at its most cynical. He stared into the fire.

Miss Silver said gently.

“You would not have made one another happy, Frank.”

“Probably not. At the moment the possibilities seem all the other way.”

“You are not really suited.”

He gave a short hard laugh.

“What you mean is that I don’t really suit! I’m a policeman, you see-a sordid profession.”

“My dear Frank!”

He nodded.

“That’s what she thinks, you know-and I’m not so very sure I don’t agree.”

Miss Silver said, “Fiddlesticks!”

Frank laughed again, more naturally this time.

“I never heard you say that before.”

“I never heard you talk so much nonsense.”

This time he returned her smile.

“I’m sore, you know. But I’ll get over it. You’re quite right-we don’t suit. We both thought we were going to, but we don’t really, so it’s better as it is. In fact,

Miss Silver beamed. “I hope so,” she said.

Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.

Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.

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