Silence in Court (10 page)

A feeling of relief began to spread. The party was nearly over, and nobody had been shot to pieces.

Carey took the glass over to the table and returned with it again. Honoria Maquisten stirred it, put in as much brandy as there was room for, stirred it again, and drank it off. Then she handed the glass to Carey and told her to put it back on the shelf—“Magda can wash it when she comes in. It's her job.”

But Carey waited to wash the glass. That was one of the things that came out afterwards.

When she came back Mrs. Maquisten was sipping her decent cup of coffee with enjoyment. Nora was saying something, but whatever it was it never got finished, for Mrs. Maquisten suddenly rested her cup and saucer on her knee and said harshly and directly,

“That is enough about that! You are all here now, and I wish to speak to you. You can sit down, Nora. Carey, come round where I can see you! Honor, stop fidgeting!”

Dennis turned his smile upon her.

“What am I to do, darling?”

Their eyes met—hazel eyes, so very much alike, dominant anger in hers, something that resisted and would always resist in his, with a smile to cover it.

She said in what for her was a low tone, “Be quiet, Dennis.” Then, raising it, “I want to speak to you.”

But she did not speak at once. She let an unendurable silence fall. Honor had been fiddling with a coffee-spoon. She still held it between her fingers, but without any movement. Her eyes were fixed upon it. Nobody moved. The silence went on.

At long last Honoria Maquisten broke it. She said,

“You will all be here tomorrow at a quarter to two—here, in this room. I accept no excuse from anyone.” She turned her eyes on Nora. “It will come into your lunch hour. If necessary, you will plead very urgent private affairs. Her look travelled on, touching them all. “I have told Robert that he is to be here. Hood will be bringing me the draft of my new will. I shall have something to say to you all before I sign it. I have made a good many wills, but this one is final. I shall fill in the names and certain details tomorrow and sign the draft. I do not feel inclined to wait for Mr. Aylwin's return. He might be delayed, and neither he nor anyone else will, turn me from what is my decided purpose. And now you may go! Nora—ring for Molly to come and take away the tray, and go and tell Ellen to come and put me to bed!” She lifted her coffee-cup and drank what remained in it at a draught. “Put this back on the tray, Carey! And now all of you go! I-am tired.”

They trooped out.

At the door Carey turned and looked back. She saw Honoria Maquisten sitting up straight in her many-coloured brocade with its gleams of silver and gold and her diamonds flashing. The overhead light shone down on the piled red hair with its elaborate curls, on the long white face, the scarlet patch high on either cheek, the proud, set mouth, the brilliant eyes.

Dennis had turned too. He blew a kiss and called, “Sleep well, darling!”

The door was shut.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Magda Brayle came in at half past ten. Carey heard the click of the front door lock and turned to look. She was on her way up to bed, and she was very tired. She turned on the fourth step and saw Magda come in. That is to say she knew it must be Magda because she had just used her latchkey and come in with an air of being quite at home, but if she had seen her anywhere else it would never have occurred to her that they had met before. Magda was a neat starched outline, a set of colourless features, an apron and a cap. This was a very smart young woman in a fur coat which at any rate looked expensive, sheer silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes, her hair curled up in a pouf above her brow, pearl studs in her ears, eyebrows and lashes darkened, and plenty of bright lipstick. It was quite astonishing how different she looked. Carey found herself staring, and made haste to speak.

“I'm just going up to bed. I hope you've had a nice time.”

Magda hurried past her with a brief “Oh, quite,” but turned a little higher up to enquire over her shoulder,

“Did she take her sleeping-draught?”

“Oh, yes.”

One foot on the next step, Magda said,

“When?”

“Oh, about a quarter to nine. Yes, it must have been, because we got downstairs again in time for the nine o'clock news.”

“You were all there?”

“Yes, we had our coffee with her, but we were down again before nine.”

“Then she'll be off. I'll just look in and make sure.” And with that she ran up the rest of the way.

Carey followed slowly. It seemed a long way up tonight. She was tired, and troubled in her mind. She was very tired.

According to what she said afterwards, Magda Brayle turned out of the corridor into her own bedroom, switched on the light, and threw down her coat and bag upon the bed. She then went through the connecting door into the bathroom, where she carefully removed all traces of make-up. Would Mrs. Maquisten be wild if she saw them, or wouldn't she? With her face clean and colourless again, she opened the door into the bedroom and stood there listening. She heard the sound of regular breathing and closed the door again. The used medicine-glass had been washed clean. It stood turned upside down in the middle of the shelf. She returned to her own room and went to bed.

Carey lay in the dark and was haunted by a tune. This happened to her when she was overtired. Sometimes it was one kind of a tune, and sometimes another. Tonight it was a faint, ghostly echo of Paul Robeson singing—“a long ways from home.”

Just that one phrase going on endlessly, over, and over, and over again—“a long ways from home.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She woke up to Molly in the room—putting down her tea, drawing the curtains, and crying. Carey's perfectly blank mind received the impression that Molly was doing all these things at one and the same time. It was like the way things happen in a dream, telescoped and a little distorted, so that even before she was really awake the day had a tinge of nightmare.

She woke up suddenly and said,

“What is it?”

Molly turned from the rattling curtain-rings. Beyond her the dark grey morning looked in.

“Oh, Miss Carey—Mrs. Maquisten—she's dead! Isn't it dreadful?”

Carey said, “Oh,
no!
” The words shook, and the world into which she had come shook with them. She couldn't imagine that world without its centre.

But Molly was pouring it all out, excited, sobbing, important.

“Nurse went in and found her. Ellen, she come up with the tea same as she always does. She took it in and put it down and drew the curtains, and Mrs. Maquisten never woke up. And Ellen goes through the bathroom and knocks on Nurse's door. I was in there doing the bath, and Nurse, she says, ‘What is it?' and she opens the door dressed all but her cap she was. And Ellen says, ‘She's sleeping very sound. I never known her not be awake when her tea comes. And she was early last night too—short of ten o'clock when I put out her light and come away. That's what comes of sleeping-draughts. Give me a nice hop pillow!' she says. ‘And if her tea's cold when she wakes, it won't be my fault,' she says. And Nurse, she goes straight through, and she comes back again and she says, ‘Oh, Ellen—she's gone!'”

Carey dressed and came down to a house that had changed overnight—everyone with that same feeling of having got up very early to catch a train, only there wasn't any train to catch—action suddenly arrested, left at a loose end, without purpose. And back of it all, that something which slows the footsteps, lowers the voice, and hints at things to come.

When Dr. Adams had come and gone the hint became a threat. Four people in the study stood looking at one another. Dennis repeated the words which had struck three of them silent.

“He won't sign the certificate.”

They were all looking at him now—Nora in her uniform, a little pale, a little shocked; Honor rather more of a wet rag than usual; Carey very white indeed against the shining blackness of her hair.

It was Nora who said, “Why?”

“He's not satisfied. He thinks she's had an overdose. He says he feels obliged to notify the police.”

He stood there leaning on his crutch, no expression in his voice, no expression in his face. And this absence changed him quite beyond belief. Without the lively play of humour, the light come and go of fancy, feeling, sarcasm and the rest, he was no longer Dennis but somebody else—a stranger who had shaved carelessly, who looked cold and rather ill, and who spoke in a leaden voice which neither rose nor fell.

Nora gave herself a little jerk and said,

“Nonsense! He's a fussy old woman. Aunt Honoria liked him because he ate out of her hand and only ordered her to do what she wanted—” Then, breaking off suddenly, “The
police?
Den, he
can't!
”

“I'm afraid he can. In fact he probably has by now. If he doesn't see his way to signing the certificate there's nothing else for it—there'll have to be an inquest.”

Honor made a faint bleating sound of protest. Nora stared, her round kitten eyes quite blank, the colour in them as clear as the brown in a peaty pool.

“Gosh—how she'd hate it!” she said. And then, “Well, I must be off—brass hats won't wait.” She touched him lightly as she went by to the door, two fingers just flicking his sleeve. “Cheer up, Den—I expect it's a mare's-nest. I'll be back some time.”

She went out and the others envied her. The darkest part of the shadow had obviously not touched her yet. Dr. Adams was an old fuss, the inquest something which Aunt Honoria would have hated, and she was sorry about Den being worried. They fought as they had fought in the nursery they had shared at the top of this very house, but under the scratches and the rough and tumble there was the old, strong, authentic brother-and-sister tie, unnoticed when things go smoothly, but tough enough to take a strain when it came.

From that point the day began to darken into nightmare—a police inspector asking questions, and, after the post mortem, his return and the taking of statements from everyone in the house. Because Dr. Adam wasn't an old fuss—he was right. Honoria Maquisten had died in the night because she had had about three times the number of tabloids she ought to have taken, and nobody who knew her could believe that she would have committed suicide.

Since there could be no question of accident, there came in the word which was to stay with them through all the hours and days and weeks to come—the word Murder. One of the old words coming down out of remote dark ages—used, and used, and over used, but never without its secret, dreadful thrill. Because, however casually spoken, however hackneyed, its syllables by their own black magic can still call up the ghosts of all the crimes which sweep in pale or red or black procession across the underworld of history. When it is spoken in a house, that house is linked with the haunted houses of all time. The shadow which has grown old since Cain comes there and broods upon it.

This house no longer belonged to those who lived in it. It belonged for all present purposes to the law, whose servants came and went, and transacted their business in the family rooms, interviewing everyone, taking statements. Most of these interviews took place in the study, leaving to the family a choice between the dining-room, where there was no place to sit except at the table as if perpetually waiting for a meal, and the big drawing-room with its chandeliers tied up in bags and its yellow satin furniture shrouded in dust-sheets.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In the study Chief Inspector McGillivray interviewed Magda Brayle. A large man with a bright blue eye and hair which must have been fiery when he was young. It was mellowed now and streaked with grey, but his moustache betrayed him. For the rest, he had high, flushed cheek-bones, a blunt nose, a blunter tongue, and the accents of his native land—the fine rolling r's which have slipped from southern speech, and the fine broad vowels which do justice to a well constructed sentence. A diffident young man who never uttered sat by and wrote rapidly in shorthand. His name presently emerged as Dowling—a negligible person, deriving his sole importance from the fact that he too served the law.

“Now, Nurrse,”—McGillivray rolled several r's—“you can tell me in yer own worrds just what happened, so far as ye know it, from a quarter past two yesterrday afternoon.”

Magda had an upright chair. She sat up straight against its straight back, cap collar and apron immaculately white and stiff, features sedately composed, voice professionally cool.

“I was in the bathroom, with the door into Mrs. Maquisten's bedroom a little ajar.”

“What were ye doing there?”

A shade of surprise came into her voice.

“I was washing out some handkerchiefs. I heard Molly come in and say, ‘There's a letter,' and I heard Mrs. Maquisten call her back.”

“How?”

“Very angrily. I knew at once that something was wrong. I was wondering whether to go in, when she asked for Miss King or Mrs. Hull. When Molly said they were both out she asked for Mr. Harland, and then for Miss Silence. They had gone out to lunch together, and she said that whoever came in first was to come up to her at once.”

“Now, Nurrse—was there any difference in the way she said those names?”

“I don't think so. She was too angry to make any difference.”

“And who came in firrst?”

“Miss Silence—at about a quarter to three.”

“And were ye still washing handkerchiefs?”

His eye was bright upon her, but she showed no discomposure. “I thought it best to be where I could go to her if she needed me. It wasn't good for her to be excited.”

“And the door would still be a wee bit open?”

Magda said, “Yes.”

“Well, what did ye hear?”

Magda settled helself with a prim crackling of starch.

“Well, I couldn't hear everything, you know, Inspector, and particularly I couldn't hear all Miss Silence said because she kept her voice quite low—not just at first, because I heard her say, ‘What is it, Cousin Honoria?' And Mrs. Maquisten said, ‘Come here, Carey,' quite loud, but after that she began to whisper.”