The Watersplash (10 page)

Susan spent a dusty morning finishing up the Victorian novelists. There seemed to be an incredible number of them. An entire set of Mrs. Henry Wood, including no less than three copies of the famous East Lynne. A notorious tear-jerker— but three copies! There were also sets of Charlotte M. Yonge, an author beloved by Susan’s Aunt Lucy, and whose descriptions of vast Victorian families she herself had always found enthralling. There they were, in their original editions, and obviously well read. She remembered to have heard that strong men in the Crimea with death and disease running riot all about them had wept when the ill-fated Heir of Redclyffe died upon his honeymoon.

There was something tranquilizing about the ebb and flow of these family histories, even when they dealt with such tragedies as this. The people who died in them would all have been dead anyhow today. The people who lived in them were really still very much alive. Susan found herself dipping here and there, relieved to get away from the thought of Clarice Dean drowned only last night in the watersplash. She hadn’t known her very well, and she hadn’t liked her very much. No, she hadn’t really liked her at all. But she was a girl, here in Greenings, and if she hadn’t drowned herself, then somebody had drowned her. It gave you a horrid cold feeling. And then for it to be Edward who found the body—

She went on dipping, and trying to forget about Clarice Dean.

Edward was out all day. Susan and Emmeline had lunch together. They discussed the now urgent problem of finding homes for Amina’s kittens.

“And of course I would love to keep them, but if Arnold is really going to turn us out—”

“Darling, you can’t possibly keep them! You have eleven cats already!”

Emmeline looked at her wistfully.

“Is it really eleven? I find them so difficult to count.”

“It is. And there will be floods of more kittens before you can turn round. I think they would take one up at the Hall, and Mrs. Alexander says her sister-in-law in Embank would have one if it is really pretty.”

“They are all pretty,” said Emmeline fondly. “Amina’s kittens always are. I don’t think I can bear to part with them. Arnold hasn’t said anything more about my going, so I think perhaps he didn’t really mean it. Jonathan always did say that he was like that—doing things in a hurry, you know, just to bolster himself up and make himself believe he had one of those strong, ruthless characters. But he isn’t really like that at all. My dear Jonathan was a very good judge of character, and of course Arnold being his own brother, he did know him very well. So I think perhaps that was just a bit of make-believe—telling me I must go. I think he was put out about the garden being untidy —and the cats—and Edward coming here. Especially about Edward. You know, Susan, I quite thought there was something he was afraid of about Edward. Of course people have been saying that he ought at least to give him a share of what James left, and it might have been that. But he went away very quickly when I asked him why he was afraid of Edward coming back.”

Susan was looking surprised. She said,

“Afraid—”

“Oh, yes, I think so. And perhaps my saying it showed him that it wouldn’t do. People would blame him a good deal if he turned me out, and I expect he will have thought of that by now. So I really think I might keep the kittens. Don’t you?”

Neither of them mentioned Clarice Dean.

At two o’clock Susan went back to the Hall, where she encountered a really horrifying book about a man who was transported to Australia in the old Botany Bay days. It was called For the Term of His Natural Life, and dipping into it felt exactly like opening the door upon a hurricane in which all the forces of evil were let loose. It was some time before she could get the door shut again.

That finished the Victorians as a body, though she was to discover stray volumes here and there all over the place. She now mounted a ladder, began to investigate the upper shelves, and found herself in the eighteenth century. Volumes of the Spectator and the Rambler. Gulliver’s Travels, original and unexpurgated. Johnson’s Dictionary, and the first edition of Rasselas. These would be valuable—but she wasn’t sure of the values. She could write to a crony of the Professor’s who had that kind of bookshop and find out, if Arnold Random liked.

She went on discovering treasures and making a list of them.

Round about four o’clock she got down from the ladder and proceeded in search of Arnold. She found him behind a newspaper in one of the big study chairs. In his stiff way he seemed quite pleased to see her—said he had no idea of selling the books, but if any of them were valuable, it would be just as well to know. The probate people had accepted the insurance figures, but he didn’t suppose there had ever been any real valuation by an expert.

Susan was saying, “Well, I’m not an expert, but I can make a list and send it on to someone who is, if that is what you would like me to do,” when the study door was thrown open and Doris Deacon announced,

“Miss Blake—”

She had managed to get to the door before her this time, but she had almost had to run to do it.

“Walking past anyone as if they wasn’t there!” she told her mother that evening. “And with no more than a ‘you needn’t trouble—I know the way, Doris’! Well, I know my manners, if she doesn’t know hers, and I got there first and showed her in. Mr. Arnold didn’t look any too pleased to see her neither. And who would! He’d got Miss Susan there, talking about those old books she’s sorting, and they didn’t either of them look any too pleased.”

“Miss Mildred wouldn’t bother herself about that,” said Mrs. Deacon with conviction.

Arnold Random was facing the door. He saw it open with a horrid sense of foreboding. Mildred! And what did she want this time? A blackness came up in his mind. He could neither see past it nor through it.

She came into the room with her head poking a little forward, her nose jutting from the long sallow face, her eyes set upon him in a bright unwinking stare. A vulture—that was what she looked like—a creature who would tear the very flesh from your bones. He remembered that he had come near to marrying her a long time ago, and it made him feel physically sick.

She had her black collecting-book in her hand, and she said,

“Perhaps I could just have a word with you, Arnold.”

Susan’s presence was being dispensed with. A light nod of the head intimated as much. She had always thought that Miss Mildred was probably the rudest woman in the world, and she was sorry for Arnold Random, but she did not see her way to remaining. She said, “Well, another time, Mr. Random,” and withdrew.

Miss Mildred seated herself. Arnold remained standing. He said,

“What do you want, Mildred?”

Her smile horrified him.

“Can you not guess?”

“I certainly cannot.”

She laid the collecting-book on her knee.

“You should be feeling very well pleased, I think.”

It was true. But he was not prepared to hear it said. He had felt a relief of which he could not but be ashamed. He felt it no longer. A sense of dreadful strain began to impose itself. Mildred Blake’s regard did nothing to avert it. He said in his coldest manner,

“I really have no idea what you mean.”

“Have you not?” She tapped the black collecting-book with a gloved finger. The tear had been mended, but it showed, thick and ugly like some flat crawling insect. “Well, my dear Arnold, let me enlighten you. Miss Dean’s death though extremely inconvenient to me—Ora is really quite intolerable when we are without a nurse—must have been a considerable relief to you.”

“To me?”

“Naturally. Since there is always the possibility that your brother James might have told her he had made another will. As a matter of fact, from something I heard her say on the telephone to Edward, she stated plainly that she had something of importance to tell him, and that it concerned his uncle.”

Arnold Random groped for his handkerchief and passed it across a sweating brow.

“What did she say?”

Mildred Blake fixed a look of malicious amusement upon him.

“Do you really need to ask me that? I have an idea that you must have been listening too. A party line is so very convenient when you want to know what is going on. But if you wish to pretend with me, of course you can. She didn’t tell him anything, as I think you very well know. And she won’t tell anyone anything now, will she? Of course I can’t help feeling that you have been rather imprudent. I quite see that you couldn’t afford to give her the time to overcome Edward’s reluctance to be confided in. The idea was, of course, to restore the rightful heir and then marry him, and Edward was so much taken up with avoiding being married out of hand that he hadn’t any attention to spare for her hints about James’ will. But she was being very persistent, and I suppose you couldn’t really afford to wait. Only I do think it was a pity to make it a Friday—” She paused, and added, “again.”

He was staring at her, the handkerchief crumpled in his hand.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

She went on being amused.

“Everyone knows that you practise in the church from nine to ten on Friday nights. William Jackson drowns in the splash on one Friday night, and Clarice on the next. By the way, you must have known her quite well. Or didn’t you? Did you ever make love to her?”

He flushed with anger.

“Of course not! I didn’t even like her!”

She tapped the black collecting-book.

“Well, I don’t think I should say too much about that if I were you. You know, Arnold, I am warning you seriously that the whole thing doesn’t look too well. First you were going away for the week-end, and I was to play the organ. But that meant you would have no excuse for going up to the church to practise on Friday night, so as late as Friday morning you dropped a note in at our letter-box to say that you would not be going away after all. And that meant you had the excuse you needed if you were to meet Clarice Dean down by the splash.”

“You’re mad! What are you saying?”

“I am not mad at all—I am very sensible. And pray don’t waste my time and your own by protesting that you had nothing to do with Miss Dean’s death. I shouldn’t believe you, and you might annoy me so much that I shouldn’t bother about helping you any more.”

He took a step towards her and said in a voice that shook with rage,

“I never saw her! I never touched her! I never thought of touching her!”

She gave a short staccato laugh.

“See if you can find anyone to believe it! William Jackson was the only surviving witness of a will which you suppressed. He drowned in the splash. Clarice Dean knew about the will— she was trying to tell Edward about it. She drowned in the splash. And both these drownings are on a Friday night—one last week, and one this week. And you up at the church hardly a stone’s throw away.”

His face was grey. There were patches of livid pallor about his mouth. He could find no more to say than what had come to him with the first impulse of fear and shock.

“You are mad!”

She shook her head, and went on shaking it. The deliberate motion turned him giddy—her head in the battered hat—the predatory nose, like the beak of a carrion bird—the glitter of the eyes. Moving from side to side. Swinging like a pendulum… Mist invaded the picture.

When it cleared he was leaning forward with both hands on the writing-table, and she was still again. Waiting. Looking at him and waiting. He remembered that in the old days of the torture chamber a man who swooned upon the rack was given a space to recover in order that he might be tortured again.

When he had straightened himself he put out a hand behind him, groped for a chair, and sank back upon it. He hadn’t anything to say. If she had, let her say it.

She broke the silence complacently.

“Now really, Arnold, there is no need for you to put yourself in such a state. I am sure that it must be very bad for you. You ought to know by now that I am willing to do anything I can to help you. After all, we are very old friends. It was naturally a shock to you to realize how strong the evidence against you might be if—” She paused, and repeated the word with a good deal of stress upon it. “I say if it were placed before the police. But you have to remember that this evidence doesn’t make sense unless the facts with regard to James’ second will are taken into consideration. Now both the witnesses are dead, and Clarice Dean is dead. Neither she nor William Jackson can supply the police with information about the will which you destroyed, or with the only credible motive for their deaths. I am the only one who can do either of these things. I heard William Jackson accuse you of suppressing the will, and I can bear witness to the fact that you did not deny it. And there is the danger point! Once you are suspected of destroying the will, all the rest follows—a motive for the drowning of William Jackson—a motive for the drowning of Clarice Dean. You are in my hands. I can destroy you, or I can save you. That sounds a little melodramatic, but it happens to be the bare truth. If I tell the police what I know about the will, I really do not see that they can do anything but conclude that you murdered William Jackson and Clarice Dean. If I hold my tongue, nobody will be in a position to tell them anything at all, and they will never know that your brother made a will which cut you out. I hope that is all quite clear. I shall be taking a certain risk, and I shall expect compensation. You can’t expect me to do it for nothing, you know. Now can you?”

He looked at her, and felt himself without power. If she went to the police, it would be all over. He had the desperate mental picture of a rock balanced on the brow of a hill. It did not move yet, but at a touch it would move, and once it moved there would be no stopping it. He could see how it would stir, and start, and gather speed, until it went bounding down the slope and out of sight.

Looking at Mildred Blake and hating her with the strength of misery, he said,

“I think you are a devil!”

It was not until the evening that the first trickle from the now rushing stream of Greenings gossip reached Inspector Bury. He had taken statements from Edward Random and the Vicar, and from the Miss Blakes, but no one had thought of telling him that a work-party met at the Vicarage on Friday evenings, or that Miss Sims and Mrs. Stone were sponsoring a highly sensational rumour involving Edward Random. Inspector Bury was not a local man, and had only been a year or two at Embank, but his wife’s stepmother was a cousin of Miss Sims, and one of her uncles had married a distant connection of the Stones. The uncle had a flourishing confectionery business in Embank, and old Mrs. Stone came over twice in the week to pick up a good-sized basket of the left-overs. Saturday was one of her days, and she hadn’t kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Bury, who had called after dropping in to see her father and stepmother, was able to pass on what Miss Sims had said to them, and to garner what had been contributed by Mrs. Stone. She had both versions hot and spiced all ready for her husband when he came off duty. He received them first with a frown, and then with a burst of sarcastic laughter.

“Now, isn’t that the public all over! There I was on the spot for the best part of the morning, and could anyone tell me that the girl and young Random were supposed to be sweethearting, or breathe a word about their being heard quarrelling on the road, or his telling her off on the telephone? Of course they couldn’t—not one blessed word! But they could pay their bus fares into Embank and go whispering it round among their relations!”

Mrs. Bury tossed a pretty carroty head.

“Well, they’re my relations too!” she said.

He gave her a rather absent-minded kiss.

“Now, Lil, I’m not saying anything against your relations.”

There was a second and more vehement toss.

“And you’d better not!”

“Much as my place is worth,” he said good-humouredly. “Now look here, Lil, you know these people, and I don’t. How much of what they say is likely to be true, and how much is what you might call window-dressing put up to make you think there’s something behind it?”

They hadn’t been married very long, but she knew already when it wasn’t any good trying to tease him. She dropped her flirting manner and said soberly,

“Miss Sims is a talker all right, but she doesn’t make things up. If she says she heard that on the telephone, then she heard it. She’ll take an age to tell you a thing, but it will be true all right. She’s the kind that will keep you waiting till you’ve got the fidgets while she makes up her mind whether a thing happened at four o’clock or at five minutes past.”

“And this Mrs. Stone?”

“Well, she’s a perfectly horrid old woman,” said Lil frankly. “And no relation of mine, thank goodness! And only a far-off cousin of Aunt Ivy’s, if it comes to that. Some people wouldn’t take any notice of a family that’s gone down in the world like the Stones have, but Uncle Bert and Aunt Ivy are ever so good to her.”

“You say she’s a horrid old woman. The point is, does she tell the truth?”

“Well, I don’t know. She can pitch a tale all right—always coming round and making out she and her daughter are next door to starving. Goodness knows what she doesn’t get out of Uncle Bert and Aunt Ivy!”

With these sidelights on the characters of the prospective witnesses, he went over to Greenings bright and early on the Sunday morning. Both ladies stuck to their stories, and he certainly got the impression that they were telling the truth. For one thing, in neither case did the story differ from the version repeated to him by his wife. Miss Sims took a long time over hers. He had to hear exactly what she was doing when the telephone-bell rang, and all about the confinement case which had kept the doctor out and made him miss his surgery, together with her reasons for not taking a light into the study, and a good deal of corroborative detail as to how it was that she was able to see who was in the telephone-call-box, but in the end it came down to the words which Lil had repeated—“Edward—darling—I must see you—I really must! There’s something you ought to know!”

So far Miss Sims was in no doubt at all. Then it appeared her attention had been distracted by the sound of the doctor’s latchkey, and all she was sure of after that was that Mr. Edward was speaking to the poor girl very harsh indeed—“And the Doctor came in to his supper, so I couldn’t wait any more. You wouldn’t believe what it is with the meals in a doctor’s house— never knowing when they’ll be in, and everything to keep hot.”

Upon this favourite theme she could have said a great deal more, but she was not given the opportunity. She complained afterwards to Mrs. Alexander that people were always in a hurry these days—hardly gave you time to finish a sentence before they were off. “And I’m sure I’m sorry for poor Lil if he’s like that at home. She’s my Cousin Emily’s daughter, you know, and I wonder at her marrying into the police.”

The Inspector found Mrs. Stone in her garden. He had knocked twice on the front door, when she came shuffling round the corner of the house with the front of her skirt picked up to hold half a dozen apples which, she explained, had come down in the night—“And I have to wait to let them fall, for I can’t shake the tree, nor I can’t climb it, and no one to do it for me. My daughter’s a shocking invalid. Chronic, that’s what Dr. Croft calls her. And no appetite, but she fancies a bit of apple now and again.”

The Inspector said he fancied a bit of apple himself. He found Mrs. Stone just as ready to talk as Miss Sims had been. She opened the cottage door and showed him just how she had stood with the candle in her hand showing Miss Susan out.

“And the two of them coming up the road quarrelling something dreadful.”

“How do you mean, quarrelling? Could you hear what they said?”

“Not at the first of it I couldn’t. But you don’t need to have the words to know when people are quarrelling. Proper angry, that’s what he was, and Mr. Edward isn’t the one you’d like to get that way with you. I felt sorry for the pore girl even before I knowed who she was. And she was sorry for herself too, I can tell you that. Holding on to him with both her hands she was, and crying ever so. ‘Oh, Edward!’ she says, and calls him darling. And, ‘Don’t be so angry!’ she says, and, ‘I can’t bear it!’ And ‘It frightens me!’ she says. And no good Mrs. Alexander nor anyone else letting on that she hadn’t any call to be frightened. ‘That’s as may be,’ I told her, but she thought different. ‘You frighten me when you’re like that!’ was what I heard the pore girl say with my own ears. And he tells her to leave him alone. And Miss Susan Wayne heard it all, same as what I did. She had to make up a story about Miss Dean turning her ankle, but it wasn’t no ankle she was crying for, and you may take my word for that.”

At the south lodge he found Miss Susan Wayne. From the fact that she was wearing a hat he deduced that she was thinking of going to church. Well, he wouldn’t need to keep her long.

She took him into the drawing-room, which contained no more than a couple of the cats, and said she would tell Mrs. Random. “I think she is dressing for church.”

“As a matter of fact, Miss Wayne, it was you whom I wanted to see.”

“Yes?”

Stupid to feel nervous. Stupider still to show that she was nervous. And he had gone over to the window, so that she had to stand and face the light.

“Won’t you sit down?”

He said, “Thank you,” and chose the window-seat, which made things worse.

She took the arm of one of the big chairs. She had the light in her eyes. He could see their dark unusual grey and the fine grain of her skin. He could see whatever he wanted to see. She straightened her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. “What is it, Inspector?”

“Well, Miss Wayne, I have a statement here from Mrs. Stone who lives in the end cottage before you come to the Vicarage. She says you were visiting her on Thursday evening. Do you remember what time it was when you left?”

“Oh, about a quarter past seven, I think. We have supper at half past, but it is always difficult to get away from Mrs. Stone. She likes to talk.”

“Yes, I have noticed that.” Bury’s tone was dry. “She has been talking to me. She says that when she was showing you out two people came up from the direction of the watersplash—Mr. Edward Random and Miss Clarice Dean. She says that they were quarrelling, and she has given me her version of what they said. I have come here to ask you for yours.”

He saw her colour change. She looked down at her hands. Her thoughts raced. If he had been talking to Mrs. Stone, then he knew everything that Mrs. Stone knew. It wouldn’t do any good for her to contradict it. Lies weren’t any good, really. She had a deep, quick instinct about that, and she was no good at them anyhow. She lifted her eyes to his face and said,

“It wasn’t exactly a quarrel.”

“Will you tell me just what you heard?”

She frowned a little. He saw that she was trying to remember.

“The voices at first—his voice—Edward Random’s—”

“You recognized it?”

“Oh, yes. I didn’t hear any words—only his voice.”

“Speaking loudly? Angrily?”

“Not loudly. He sounded—well, put out.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“The girl was Clarice Dean. You know that of course. She was—behaving very stupidly—making a fuss.”

“Will you explain what you mean by that?”

Susan’s fair skin had flushed.

“It sounds so horrid to say it when she is dead, but she was the sort of girl who likes to make everything into a scene. She dramatized herself, and she did her best to make other people play the kind of part she wanted them to play. She was having a pretty dull time with the Miss Blakes, and she was trying to get Edward Random to play up to her.”

“Is that what he told you, Miss Wayne?”

The flush deepened.

“It’s what I could see for myself. She was always ringing him up—trying to fix dates with him—that kind of thing.”

“Mr. Random told you that?”

He got an emphatic shake of the head.

“Of course not! He has been very busy taking over from Mr. Barr, and often very late coming home. If he was out, I had to answer the telephone. If he was in, Mrs. Random and I could hardly help hearing his side of the conversation. The telephone is in a little room at the back. He generally leaves the door open.”

He went back to the Thursday evening, taking her over what she had heard, putting Mrs. Stone’s statement to her for corroboration.

“Miss Dean was crying?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And clinging to him?”

“She was holding on to his arm.”

“Now, Miss Wayne, did you hear her use these words, ‘Edward—darling—don’t be so angry! I can’t bear it when you are like that! It frightens me!’?”

“It was that kind of thing. She was putting on an act. That was why he was angry. It was done for Mrs. Stone to hear.”

He went on with his questioning.