Flowers Stained With Moonlight (8 page)

Dora, I won’t go on telling you the vagaries of the conversation, for I couldn’t possibly remember it; the remarks became wilder and more varied, as an ever greater number of guests came to ‘recall’ something about the mysterious gentleman. Yet as far as I could ascertain, only Martha appeared certain of having really seen him; it was in the early afternoon, and he was walking away from the village in the direction of Haverhill Manor, on that very same road from which (while coming towards the village) some witness claimed to have seen Sylvia running through the woods.

Old Martha may be the ‘strange old lady’ of Haverhill, but her testimony was perfectly clear, and it was accepted as gospel truth by the whole of the company. An idea to verify her tale formed itself in the back of my mind.

When everything had been said, repeated and speculated over that possibly could, and not a single crumb of bread or cake nor a drop of tea remained, the party began to show signs of breaking up.

‘We’d best be going, Va – Vanessa,’ said Peter, masking the last word with a grin and a mumble as he glanced around him self-consciously. ‘Otherwise, you’ll be late for supper getting back.’

I did not feel as though I should be able to eat any supper at all, but I was in a hurry to depart for reasons of my own. We exchanged warm goodbyes with all present, and above all with kind Mrs Bird, who invited us to return with great hospitality; the dear lady was simply blooming
under all the attention! I wonder if her past life has not been particularly monotonous.

Peter brought round the carriage from where he had stabled it at the public house, and I climbed up onto the box beside him.

‘Peter, before we start on the road home, there is something I would like to do,’ I said. ‘That is, if you think it is a good idea,’ I added with false deference.

‘What’s that?’ he enquired with interest, eager to please.

‘It’s about that young man, the one they all said they saw. I’m thinking about Sylvia, Peter; I think she’s in trouble with the police, as they seem to suspect her, and there may be an important clue there, don’t you think?’

‘Could well be. But what can we do about it?’

‘Just this one thing. It’s little enough. Let’s stop at the nearest train station, and ask at the window if anyone remembers a young man of his description getting off the train that Sunday.’

He didn’t answer, but clucked up the horses, and we started off at a trot. He seemed to be mulling over things in his mind. After a while, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the horses’ backs, he said to me,

‘I think it would be best not to meddle.’

‘Perhaps – for other people!’ I replied hotly. ‘But we – why, we are already meddling, just by being acquainted with Sylvia! I shouldn’t leave a stone unturned if I thought it could straighten things out for her with the police.’

‘Are you such great friends, then?’ he asked, in the tone of one who does not believe a word of it. I felt faintly
indignant. Indeed, I have only known Sylvia for a very few days, but there is something … she has something …

‘I’ve become dearly fond of her since I’ve been here,’ I said, ‘but even more importantly, I’m just convinced from the bottom of my heart that she’s not the murderer. I hate to see the police barking up the wrong tree after an innocent person, when they could be chasing the real criminal!’

‘Why are you so sure of that?’

‘Why, aren’t you?’

‘Well, I don’t want to speak ill of anyone.’

‘Peter!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you suspect Sylvia? You never told me!’

‘Well, no,’ he said quickly. ‘I guess I don’t really. Otherwise I’d feel funny living there, if I really thought she was a murderess. Still – there were some funny things.’

‘What funny things? Tell me at once!’

He paused to think and gather his words, as inarticulate people often do.

‘I haven’t much to tell, really. You see, it was like this: I was never particularly close to Mr Granger.’

‘Well, I can certainly understand that, after all that you told me about the stranglehold he had over your parents, that he called helping them. I should think you could never feel really close to him!’ I said.

‘Well, yes. But still, he had taken me on as groom, which was the job I wanted, and I was making money from him, and things were all right really. And sometimes, as I drove him around here and there, he’d talk to me.’

‘He’d talk to you? About Sylvia, you mean?’

‘Well, about her and other things. He could be a hard man, I’ll say that.

‘“I’m used to winning,” he’d tell me. “I’ve spent my life struggling to get what I want, and I generally succeed. I wanted to marry Sylvia and I did it. But marriage is no joke, Peter, just remember that when you start thinking about getting hitched. The girl is pretty and the ceremony romantic, but that’s only the beginning. People forget that this is for the rest of your life. For better or for worse, that’s what we say in the marriage vows, but that’s not my way. I won’t have Sylvia for worse; it’s got to be for better. She hasn’t been what I’ve wanted her to be since we’ve been married.”

‘“She’s done nothing wrong,” I’d say, to soothe him, for nobody ever saw Sylvia doing the things husbands usually complain of – having lovers or improper friends, or spending too much money.

‘“It’s not what she does, it’s what she doesn’t do,” he’d answer. “She hasn’t learnt to want what her husband wants.” And lately, he’d been getting angry; he talked about it to me sometimes, almost as though he was talking to himself.

‘“I’ll teach her,” he’d say. “I’ve been patient up to now. I’ve been willing to say to myself that she’s too young. But I’m getting tired of it. I’ve given her an ultimatum – she’ll satisfy me or else!” It was almost scary, how he talked, Vanessa.’ (This time, my name slipped out unawares.) ‘I didn’t want to ask him questions. I didn’t feel it was my business. I didn’t want to know anything about his ultimatum. But he let fall a couple of hints. He said something about having her locked away, I don’t know what he meant. Still, though,
who knows how angry she might have been against him, and what reasons she might have had?’

‘What an awful man he seems to have been,’ I said, trying to conceal the full force of my indignation and disgust. ‘Poor Sylvia! Yes, it’s easy to see that she had plenty of reason to be angry with him, perhaps even to hate him, deep down. Yet that doesn’t prove that she killed him! If every wife of a nasty husband resorted to murder, there wouldn’t necessarily be a lot of men left about, would there! Or women either, as the poor things would all be in prison.’

‘Oh, husbands aren’t all so bad,’ said Peter significantly, looking at me this time. ‘Lots are ever so nice to their wives.’ But I refused to be drawn into this topic, however interesting it may in reality be!

‘Well, I for one still believe it must have been that strange young man that old Martha saw,’ I cried, ‘and I’m determined to try to find out something!’

‘Why don’t you just tell the police inspector about it next time he comes to the house, then,’ said Peter. ‘Rushing about hunting things out for yourself, and asking questions – why, that’s not right for a lady like you!’

The young and liberated are often the most prejudiced of all, Dora, do you not find?

‘Oh, but I shan’t do that, Peter!’ I said hastily and soothingly. ‘I didn’t mean to at all – I meant
you
to go into the station and ask. Won’t you do it? Please? For me?’

We were nearing the very station by this time, and although I could see that he would have much preferred to avoid the whole story, Peter could not resist my calculatedly
charming appeal (accompanied, I am ashamed to confess, by fluttering eyelashes).

‘You stay here and wait, then,’ he said firmly, alighting. But this suggestion taxed my tolerance too highly.

‘Oh no, I want to watch you do it!’ I cried with assumed girlishness. ‘I shall stay right away from you, I promise – I shan’t even listen. You’ll tell me what they say.’ I suspected that without my watchful eye, he might not take the job seriously, and I had no intention of allowing that.

In spite of his reticence, Peter wished to please me, so he entered the station and I followed him a short way behind, stopped in a quiet corner, and affected to be waiting. Peter sauntered up to the window, and was soon deep in conversation with the gentleman behind it. There were no other clients in sight, no trains, and only two or three other people quietly standing about, and the man seemed pleased enough at the unexpected chat. He soon called another from the room behind, and all three put their heads together. Chuckling and exclamations were to be heard, gestures were made, a timetable was even taken out and consulted. I was most grievously beset by curiosity, but forced myself to bide my time patiently.

Have you ever noticed, Dora, how men are just incapable of repeating a conversation that they have heard? Women are all past masters at the task; they want to recount the very words that were spoken, and even the intonations, the inflections and the glances that accompany them, and top it all off with a keen analysis, whereas men seem incapable of giving even the merest coherent summary. Arthur is
particularly hopeless at it, but Peter, alas, was not much better; after a good quarter of an hour of conversation with the men in the station, after we climbed back up on the box together and started off on our way home, all he found to say was,

‘Yep, they saw him right enough.’

This information was enough to greatly excite my thirst for further detail!

‘Whatever did you talk about for the whole time?’ I asked coaxingly.

‘I don’t know, nothing really,’ was the foolish but typical answer. Still, by dint of much insistence, I elicited from him the fascinating information that not only did the gentlemen, who worked there every day of the week, remember a red-caped young man appearing in the station, but even that he stopped to ask for timetables to plan his return to London that same afternoon.

‘And he bought his ticket and took the return train, just as he had planned,’ ended Peter. ‘Now I think you’ve learnt what you wanted to, and had best just explain the whole thing to the police if you really care to do it – personally, I’d leave it alone, police and all, if I was you!’

Should I tell the police about it, or not? There will always be time to do so; it does not seem necessary to be hasty. On the other hand, they have a great many means to discover much more than I ever could about the mysterious young man; where he came from, where he went and so on. On the third hand, they wouldn’t tell me any of it. On the fourth hand, if he is the murderer and they discover
him, then there would be no need for me to work further upon the case. I must reflect over all this. Oh, how I should like to talk it over with Arthur! I wonder if I can ask Mrs Bryce-Fortescue to let me go up to Cambridge for a day or two.

Your very own loving

Vanessa

My dear sister,

It is hardly to be believed, but an extraordinary chance appears to have come my way this morning!

I was devoting myself to considering all that I had heard and learnt at Haverhill, and wondering how best to investigate this news and where to begin, and as I wandered about, deep in thought, my steps bent their way automatically to the library, perhaps in search of inspiration, or of the padded silence that reigns there.

Thanks to the thick and luxurious carpets, one can cross the room quite silently. As I did so, I suddenly became aware that I was not alone – Sylvia was fast asleep in one of the large, well-worn leather armchairs. I stood near her for a moment, watching her as her breast rose and fell quietly under her soft dress. Her arm was resting on the arm of the chair, and her hand fell over the side; her two or three bracelets had slipped down to the place where the hand widens from the wrist. One of them was a charm bracelet; a robust little silver chain with large links, from several of
which depended little silver ornaments; a heart, a cross, a little bow, a tiny key.

A key! A tiny key! My heart leapt as I perceived it, as the words overheard in the dark of the night, and nearly forgotten, suddenly sprang into my mind.
No one will ever find the key,
Sylvia had said confidently. And indeed, who could possibly guess where she might have hidden it, anywhere in this vast manor whose nooks and crannies she knows as no one else does? It had not even crossed my mind that she could have hidden it upon her person. But now, my eyes fixed with fascination on that carefully worked little key, I became filled with the utmost conviction that this, and no other, must be the key to the secret compartment of her jewellery box. Oh, if only I could get it without waking her! Her secret – I had thought it important, and then I had felt less certain, for it had seemed to me that Camilla seemed more fearful of some scandal than of an accusation of crime. And yet, no stone must be left unturned, and here was a golden opportunity!

I knelt by the armchair, and examined the bracelet. The clasp was a simple one, to be pressed and pulled open, and it hung down free from her wrist. My heart pounding with fear so that I was afraid it must be audible – it always does seem to do that at the most inconvenient moments! – I reached out to touch it, and then, stiffening my hands to control their trembling, I took it between the tips of my fingers and pulled it apart with a gentle, steady little movement. The bracelet hung open now. I stood up, trying to calm the rushing in my ears, and took a few steps away from Sylvia, standing behind
the chair where she could not see me if she opened her eyes. I was too afraid to wake her by slipping the hanging chain away from her limp arm, and remained wondering how I could obtain the key, when quite naturally, she sighed in her sleep and stirred. She shifted her arm, throwing it across her lap, and as she did so, the open bracelet slipped and fell off onto the thickly piled Persian carpet. I darted forward silently, snatched it up, backed away precipitately and waited to see if she would awake and perceive the lack. But she did not, and I left the library on cat’s paws, my heart wilder than ever, feeling like a thief and a criminal.

Oh Dora, perhaps, just perhaps, I shall now finally be able to discover something which has eluded me thus far; perhaps, after all, this key will be the one to unlock not just the box, but the mystery itself!

Only how, how shall I get at Sylvia’s jewellery box? Dare I invade her room? What if she hides the box when she realises that she has lost her bracelet? I must act quickly! What can I do? Shall I tell Mrs Bryce-Fortescue? Maybe she, with the authority of a mother, could enter her daughter’s room, take the box, unlock the compartment and look at the contents without shame.

Yes, but what if she chooses to do so alone, and finds evidence that may incriminate her daughter, if not of murder, at least of aiding and abetting it? It is just the reason for which I would not talk about this with her earlier. I believe there is no doubt whatsoever that she would destroy such evidence instantly, and for that matter, she would be quite capable of inventing some seemingly innocent excuse
to stop the investigation and send me back to Cambridge post-haste. No, I cannot let that happen – things have gone too far for that, and I feel personally responsible now for what I have undertaken. I must do something else; I shall say that I am unwell, and go to Sylvia’s room in one hour, while the others are at luncheon. Until then, I shall remain here in my room, with the door open, writing to you and checking whether or not Sylvia enters her room – if she does, I shall simply have to slip into my secret hiding place and try to get some idea of her actions.

Later, after tea
(of which I partook rather copiously … due to my feelings of distress, as well as the lack of the midday meal!)

Oh, my dear Dora, I cannot describe the fear which I suffered during the luncheon hour, when, having excused myself lamely (feeling certain that my subterfuge was utterly transparent) and retired to my room, I counted out several minutes, emerged, and tiptoed down the hallway to Sylvia’s door.

It was worse, much worse than in the library, and indeed, I believe there was some cause, for if I were to be caught and captured at the critical moment in which I should be dipping my hands into Sylvia’s jewellery box, I do not believe that even Mrs Bryce-Fortescue would be convinced that my efforts were all in the interests of her daughter – and whatever happened then, it could only be for ill! Why, if she believed I was stealing the jewellery, I should be in a fine pickle – in prison, perhaps, my reputation ruined and my future blighted, and even Arthur
would have trouble believing that the necessity to examine the contents of Sylvia’s jewellery box was absolutely unavoidable! And yet, God knows, rings, necklaces and bracelets held so little attraction for me at that particular moment that they might as well have been made of dust!

A seemingly endlessly varied series of similar such undesirable prospects presented itself to me spontaneously as I pressed the door handle of Sylvia’s room and pushed the door slowly and carefully ajar. But my feverish desire to pursue my task was stronger than all my fears together, and I closed the door silently behind me, and slipped across the room towards the famous box, which sat upon the dresser, announcing its character most openly and unashamedly.

It was a rather large, dark red leather box which opened with a nice little brass key that was innocently thrust into its hole, proclaiming to the world at large that Sylvia was unafraid of any investigation of her box. I turned the key, opened the lid, and began to poke and pry within its layered, pillowed depths to locate the invisible keyhole of the secret compartment.

Without being aware of its existence, no one could ever have guessed that the box contained such a thing. But knowing it gave me a signal advantage. I began by examining the box with care inside and out to locate where some unused portion could lie, and determined that it was necessarily at the very bottom of the box; it could not be otherwise, where every possible corner appeared to be accounted for. I then pried all about that section until, pulling two velvet cushions apart from each other, I spied a tiny hole nestling
in the depths between them. I took out the purloined charm bracelet, isolated the tiny key with trembling fingers, and thrust it into the hole. It fit, but would not turn – I began to doubt, and yet felt so sure of myself – my nervousness prevented me from calmly trying one direction and then the other – I jiggled the key and grew more anxious by the second – and then suddenly it turned and clicked.

Yet I still could not discover the compartment. I pulled and pushed gently, but nothing seemed to give. The minutes passed, and I grew more and more terrified. I searched for another way, I gently tugged at the leather tags, I pulled here and there at the cushions, I removed a number of pretty stones and bracelets to examine the box more closely. Oh, Dora, I cannot describe how nervous I became at length, how frightened, how my ears pricked up as attentive to the slightest sound as those of a trapped wild animal, which I would hardly hear anyway, as they were ringing with the banging in my chest. Yet my burning impatience would not let me shut up the box and rush from the room, as I was every moment tempted to do! After what seemed forever, but was perhaps only five minutes – certainly not enough time for the meat course to be over downstairs – I stopped trying to force the box and began to observe it carefully, study its structure, and reflect. It was thus that I finally came to the conclusion that the lid of the hidden lowest section could not in any manner be moved or shifted backwards or forwards, or lifted up vertically or in the manner of an ordinary lid. I finally concluded that it must work via some kind of a twist, and taking a deep breath, I took hold
of what must be the top of the section and swivelled it. Something folded and yielded, and suddenly it came away and the secret compartment lay revealed to my eyes!!

It was empty.

Sylvia had changed her mind, and changed her hiding place, after her discussion with her friend.

Dismay swept over me, as I wondered if she had, finally, followed Camilla’s advice and burnt the evidence, whatever it may have been? I glanced at the grate, but there was no sign of a fire having been lit there recently, as indeed it was not likely there would have been, during a warm and pleasant month of June. Still, that proved nothing – anything that can be burnt (I assumed it was papers of some sort) can be burnt even at a candle, with enough patience. All my efforts had come to nought.

With leaden hands I returned the upper portion of the jewellery case to its place, worked it snugly downwards, rearranged the disturbed pieces, and closed and locked it. I left the room, not without first opening the door a crack and spying out the hallway, and making my way quietly to the library, I slipped Sylvia’s bracelet deep down into the crack between the seat and the armrest of the chair in which she had slept so soundly. I then returned to my room, feeling dreadfully disappointed, and lying down upon my bed, I fell asleep from pure annoyance, and woke up at teatime with a great appetite.

Tea has restored at least a portion of my courage and good humour. I find that as I am making unsatisfactory progress with the inmates of this house, I should decide
once and for all to turn my attention fully to the young man spied in Haverhill on the day of the murder. For this, I must begin by returning to Cambridge, at least for a brief visit – for how can I undertake such researches without the help of my friends? I am already laying my plans, and will speak to Mrs Bryce-Fortescue about them tomorrow. The young man exists, therefore he must have an identity and live in some specific place. I shall make it my business to discover all that can be known about him!

Your disappointed but not despairing

Vanessa