Miss Silver Comes To Stay (18 page)

But of course, my dear, you must see him in the drawing-room. Bessie shall light the fire before breakfast.”

“It is very good of you, Cecilia.”

It really was, because Cecilia Voycey was dying of curiosity, and finding it very hard to bear in mind that you didn’t— you simply didn’t—ask questions about other people’s private affairs. Moral maxims are notoriously hard to live up to. The effort brought quite a deep flush to her face. But when the Chief Constable’s car drew up she merely repeated for the third time that she wouldn’t dream of intruding, and fell back upon the dining-room, where she recalled that Maud had always been provokingly discreet even at school.

In the drawing-room Miss Silver recounted her interview with Catherine Welby and the confidences of Allan Grover. March didn’t exactly pooh-pooh the latter, but he permitted himself to observe that what the solicitor’s clerk said was not evidence. With which Miss Silver agreed, adding with a mild cough that she had been impressed by his sincerity, and that she did not wish to expose herself to the reproach of having withheld information from the police.

The Chief Constable was in notably better spirits than he had been the day before. He laughed and said,

“A thing you would never do!”

If his tone was light, hers in return was serious.

“Very seldom, and only for very good reasons, Randal. And now there is something I would like to suggest to you. It may have been done already, but if not—”

“What is it?”

“It is the matter of the telephone calls on Wednesday night.”

“Calls?”

“Yes. We know that Mrs. Welby had a ten minutes’ call to Miss Cray between eight-twenty and eight-thirty—”

“It was Catherine Welby who called up?”

“Yes. Miss Cray refuses to say what they were talking about. When I suggested that it was a matter of business she said, ‘You might call it that,’ and when I asked her if it was connected with Mr. Lessiter she just said, ‘Oh!’ in an extremely startled manner. Mrs. Welby was angry and, I think, shaken when I referred to the call. When I spoke of the missing memorandum she had, I am convinced, a moment of acute fear. Putting all the small things together which I have observed or gathered from local talk, I feel quite sure that Mrs. Welby found herself placed in a very awkward position by Mr. Lessiter’s return. Mrs. Lessiter furnished the Gate House for her. More things have been added from time to time, some of them of considerable value. Mrs. Welby had given everyone to understand that these things were gifts. Then Mr. Lessiter returns. It would not be unnatural that he should ask for some proof that his mother had given Mrs. Welby so many valuable presents. There is evidence that he was searching the house for a paper which I believe to have been the memorandum mentioned in his conversation with Miss Cray. Mrs. Fallow who works at Melling House told Mrs. Voycey’s housekeeper that he was ‘pretty well turning the house upside down’ for a paper Mrs. Lessiter had left for him. We know that paper was found, because Miss Cray saw it on his table. But it cannot be found now. I do not think you can escape the inference that this memorandum would implicate someone who took steps to remove it. I do not go so far as to assert that this person was the murderer, but it certainly presents itself as a possibility. In my opinion the memorandum implicated Mrs. Welby. I think it contained proof that the contents of the Gate House were not given, but merely lent. If, as I am convinced, she had sold some of them—”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She inclined her head.

“I am convinced of it. Her income is extremely small, her clothes are extremely expensive. She is, and has been, very much alarmed. She did not anticipate Mr. Lessiter’s return.”

“With all respect for your convictions—”

She gave him her charming smile.

“You may consider if you like that I am putting a hypothetical case, but it is what I believe to have happened. Mr. Lessiter finds the memorandum at, let us say, somewhere between half past seven and eight o’clock on Wednesday evening. He rings Mrs. Welby up, and makes her realize that she has put herself on the wrong side of the law. When he has rung off she calls Miss Cray. I can deduce those two telephone conversations. We know that one of them did in fact occur. What we need is evidence that the other also did take place, and evidence as to what was said on both occasions. Has the girl on duty at the telephone exchange been approached?”

“I should think not—Drake would have mentioned it. There has been nothing until now to suggest that the call Rietta Cray received on Wednesday night had anything to do with the murder.”

“Then, Randal, will you see that the girl is questioned, and at once. We should know what telephone calls were sent out from Melling House that evening, and whether she overheard what was said. And whether she overheard any part of the conversation between Mrs. Welby and Miss Cray.”

“They are not supposed to listen.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“We all do a great many things which we are not supposed to do. There has been some local interest about Mr. Lessiter’s affairs. I hope we may discover that Gladys Luker was sufficiently curious to listen in.”

“You know who was on duty at the exchange?”

“Oh, yes—she is Mrs. Grover’s niece. A very nice girl. She has not repeated anything, but Mrs. Voycey’s housekeeper, who is friendly with her aunt, seems to think that Gladys has something on her mind.”

He laughed.

“I’ll have her questioned, but don’t be disappointed if we find the blight is due to the boy friend having missed a date. Well, I must be off. By the way, Drake is fed to the teeth about your footprints. You are always adding to the debt of gratitude I owe you.”

“My dear Randal!”

“My dear Miss Silver, you have no idea how I dislike that worthy and efficient man, and I can’t say so to anyone but you. Zeal, zeal—all zeal! You may be interested to know, on his authority, that the lady of the footprints takes a small four.”

“I take a small four myself, Randal.”

He could not restrain an exclamation.

Miss Silver coughed.

“And so does Mrs. Welby,” she said.

Catherine Welby got off the bus in the Market Square at Lenton and took the narrow cut called Friar’s Row. The Friary has been gone for so long that only the name survives, but there are some old houses lurking behind modern shop windows in Main Street. In one of these Mr. Holderness had his offices. The bookseller’s shop on the ground floor had changed hands more than once, but the firm of Stanway, Stanway, Fulpurse and Holderness had occupied the upper storeys for a hundred and fifty years. There was only one Stanway now, an invalid whose appearances at the office had become few and far between. A nephew of the name would in due course be admitted to the firm. He was at the moment completing his military service. Dark portraits of ancestral Stanways showed them shrewd-eyed, hard-mouthed, and eminently respectable. The type had not changed with the years. There had only been one Fulpurse, dead in 1846 when the first Holderness appears—his mother Amelia Fulpurse, his father connected in the female line with the Stanways. Altogether one of those old-established family concerns which are still to be found in country towns.

Catherine went up two steps to the open doorway beside the bookseller’s entrance. A flagged passage led to the gloomy stair, and the stair to the first floor and the room where Mr. Holderness kept his state. On the door next to his the name of the last Stanway lingered, only to be discerned on some unusually bright day.

Catherine Welby hesitated for a moment, then passed this empty room, devoted now to deed-boxes and dust, and opened the door of the room beyond. The tapping of a typewriter ceased, a girl looked up, and down again. Allan Grover rose to meet her.

He was to remember it all afterwards so many times. This room had a single window on to Friar’s Row. In any except the brightest weather the electric light was on all day. It was on now. It dazzled on the gold of her hair, on the small diamond brooch at her throat. It emphasized the deep blue of her eyes. She brought with her the very breath of beauty, the very pulse of romance. At twenty-one these are easily evoked. Youth is its own enchantment. He heard her say, “Good-morning,” and stammered over his reply.

Miss Janet Loddon, who had returned to her typing, gave him a quick glance of contempt and set the ensuing wrong letter down to his account. She was a year older than he was, and had been despising men a good deal for the last week or two owing to an obstinate quarrel with a boy friend whose stubbornness in refusing to eat humble pie was giving her a good deal of trouble. It restored her self-respect to observe Mr. Grover’s change of colour and the hesitation in his speech, but she felt no warmth towards Mrs. Welby, whom she set down as old enough to know better. She heard Allan go out of the room, she heard him return. Then they both went out together. He was taking her along to Mr. Holderness’s room, and being long enough over it.

To Allan there was a flash of light when Catherine came in, an interval of darkness during which he went along to Mr. Holderness’s room and came back again, and another terribly brief flash during which he walked beside her to the door at the end of the passage, threw it open, announced, “Mrs. Welby, sir,” and withdrew. He went back to his table and the contempt of Miss Loddon. She could hear a rustling of papers, the scratching of a pen. Then suddenly his chair was pushed back, he got up, and made for the door. He said,

“If I’m wanted, I’ll be in Mr. Stanway’s room. Mr. Holderness wants to look at the Jardine papers.”

Miss Loddon remarking that she supposed everyone would be able to get along without him for ten minutes or so, he went out and shut the door rather more sharply than Mr. Holderness would have approved.

Catherine Welby sat where James Lessiter had sat during his last interview with his solicitor. The windows looked upon Main Street. Being closed, the hum of the traffic was pleasantly subdued. The light striking over her left shoulder fell upon one of the Stanway portraits—William, first of the name, dark against the panelling. Beyond the fact that it was a portrait there was very little to be seen. The past engulfed it. There was a flavour of respectability, and a great deal of gloom.

Mr. Holderness appeared in vigorous contrast, his colour high, his grey hair thick and handsome, his dark brows arching over fine dark eyes. Having known Catherine from a child, he addressed her by her name. The echoes of his resonant voice saying, “My dear Catherine!” followed Allan Grover down the passage.

The interview lasted for about twenty minutes. Catherine, not unusually given to confidence, had now no impulse to withhold it. Under Mr. Holderness’s startled gaze she imparted details of a predicament which were certainly calculated to occasion his grave concern.

“You see, I have sold some of the things.”

“My dear Catherine!”

“One has to have money. Besides, why shouldn’t I? Aunt Mildred gave them to me.”

Mr. Holderness looked shocked.

“Just what have you sold?”

“Oh, odds and ends—there was a Cosway miniature—”

He made a horrified gesture.

“So easily traced!”

“I tell you Aunt Mildred gave it to me. Why shouldn’t I sell it? I would rather have kept it of course, because it was quite charming. Romney period, you know—curls and floating scarf, like the pictures of Lady Hamilton. Her name was Jane Lilly, and she was a sort of ancestress. But I had to have the money—things are such a shocking price.” This refrain recurred. “I must have a decent amount of money—you do understand that, don’t you?”

Mr. Holderness’s complexion had taken on a considerably deeper shade. He said with less than his usual suavity,

“You must cut your coat according to your cloth.”

Catherine had a rueful smile for that.

“My trouble is that I do like the most expensive cloth.”

He told her bluntly that she had got herself into a very dangerous position.

“You were foolish enough to sell things that didn’t belong to you, and James Lessiter did more than suspect you. He sat in that chair where you are sitting now and told me he was convinced that you had been defrauding the estate.”

Catherine continued to smile.

“He always had a very vindictive nature. Rietta was well out of marrying him. I told her so at the time.”

Mr. Holderness made the sound which is usually written “Tush!”

“He told me he was prepared to prosecute.”

“He told me that too.” She paused, and added, “So naturally I went up to see him.”

“You went up to see him?”

“On that Wednesday night. But Rietta was there, so I came away.”

“My dear Catherine!”

“But I went back—later.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just what you said to me—that I am in a very serious position. Or I should be if it was all going to come out.”

“There is really no reason why it should come out. You can hold your tongue, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes—I have—I do. And I shall go on—unless I simply can’t help myself.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Well, there’s a tiresome meddling old maid of a governess who has got herself mixed up in the affair. She’s staying with Mrs. Voycey.”

“My dear Catherine, how does she come into it?”

“Rietta has dragged her in. It seems she fancies herself as a detective.”

Mr. Holderness leaned back in his chair with an air of relief.

“I should think the police would make short work of her. They don’t take kindly to interference.”

“She used to be Randal March’s governess,” said Catherine. “Rietta says he thinks the world of her. Anyhow she came to see me yesterday afternoon, and I can tell you this, she’s got the whole thing pretty well pieced together.”

“What do you mean, Catherine?”

“I don’t think Rietta had talked—she wouldn’t. But this Miss Silver knew or guessed about the things from Melling House, and about James cutting up rough. She guessed I’d rung Rietta up about them on Wednesday night, and if that Luker girl at the exchange was listening in, I shall be in the soup. Of course I was a fool to talk about it on the telephone, but James had just rung me, so if anyone was listening they’d heard everything that mattered already, and I was feeling desperate. I told Rietta I was.”

“Then you had certainly better hope that the young woman at the exchange was not listening.”

Catherine waved this away.

“Oh, I don’t suppose she was—she can’t do it all the time. It’s Miss Silver who worries me. She knows about that damned memorandum—don’t ask me how. If she goes on the way she’s begun, there’s going to be a day of judgement all round. I just wonder whether I hadn’t better make a statement to the police and have done with it.”

Mr. Holderness looked scandalized.

“It would be most uncalled for, and—” he paused —“extremely dangerous. Prudence, my dear Catherine—”

Ten minutes later Catherine Welby got up to go. She turned at the open door and said in her clear voice,

“All right, I won’t do anything rash, I promise you.”

Allan Grover, coming out of Mr. Stanway’s room next door, saw that she was smiling. He heard what she had said, but he did not hear whether Mr. Holderness made any reply. He took a step towards her, and they walked together to the head of the stairs. She brought a scent of violets with her. His heart was beating hard. He couldn’t think of anything to say, but if he didn’t say something she would go. What can you say when your heart is full of forbidden things? He changed colour as he thought of them, and hastened into common place.

“Are you taking the bus out to Melling?”

“Well, yes.”

“You’re not staying in Lenton for lunch? You couldn’t—I mean you wouldn’t—have lunch with me, would you?”

He didn’t know how he got it out. The colour burnt his face. But she wasn’t angry, she was smiling.

“That’s terribly sweet of you, Allan, but I must get home.”

“I—I’d do anything for you, Mrs. Welby.”

“Would you? I wonder. No, I really believe you would. You’re a dear boy. Come round and see me some time like you used to.”

“Oh, Mrs. Welby—may I?”

She nodded, smiling, met his eyes, and let the smile slide into a laugh.

“You mustn’t be foolish, you know.”

“Is it foolish to—to love you?”

“Very.” She was still laughing. “But rather sweet. There!”

She leaned forward, kissing him lightly on the cheek, and ran down the stairs with a backward wave of her hand.