“That wouldn’t help,” said Ellis cheerfully. “Not in such a hurry to follow your father, are you? Very well, then. Stop alive, and cheer up. And let’s talk about someone else, for a change.”
“Yes, do let’s.”
She dried her eyes, and put the handkerchief away.
“Tell me about this tutor of yours,” Ellis suggested.
“David?”
“Yes. What’s his history? How did he come to be tied up with that poor soul?”
“He’s terribly fond of her,” she said quickly.
“He’d need to be. Was she always ill? Or did she get ill after they were married?”
“She was always delicate, I believe,” the girl said, frowning. “But she usen’t to be as bad as she is now. I don’t know. David’s very kind—and very sensitive. You see, his mother was ill for years before she died, when David was quite young, and he used to nurse her quite a lot. He felt it most terribly, when she died.”
Ellis nodded.
“So much, that he had to find another person to nurse?”
She looked at him, startled.
“I never thought of that. Yes. I suppose so.” Her eyes were wide as she considered this. “Anyway,” she went on, after a moment, “he was most terribly upset when she did die. Although he’d known, for ages, really, that she must. And that it was the best thing for her. Yet, when it happened, he nearly went mad.”
“I know. Much the same sort of thing happened to me. One knows, in one’s mind, what’s the best; but when the thing happens, one finds there’s a whole lot, deep down, that one didn’t know anything about.”
“Yes.” She was looking away past Ellis. “You know, it did him good, as well as being—well——”
“Bad for him?”
She frowned, not liking to hear it put so bluntly.
“I was going to say, as well as upsetting him so terribly. It’s made him most wonderfully kind. When I’ve been stupid about my work, and sulky and horrid, he was never cross, never even for one second. He understood me better than I understood myself.”
“Dangerous.” Ellis smiled at her. “People who do that aren’t always so good for one.”
“You mean because one comes to rely on them too much?”
“One day they tell one something one knows isn’t true, and then it’s terribly hard, because they’ve always been right before. Mind you”—he smiled again—“it’s not hard, every now and then, to understand you better than you understand yourself.”
She looked at him challengingly, but with a half-smile.
“Meaning, I suppose, that you do?”
“M’m. Example? You said just now that you hated yourself.”
“So I do.”
“So do we all, for that matter, unless we’re clods. Or unconscious hypocrites. But you hate yourself exaggeratedly. It’s proper—how old are you? Eighteen? It’s proper to your age. You’ll never hate yourself so much again, or feel that life’s so grim. But—what I was going to say is—you don’t know yourself. You give yourself a worse character than you’ve got.”
“You say so.”
“I’ll prove it. You told me you’d have nothing but praise for anyone that killed your father. Right. Now—be honest. Look into yourself: take a deep breath: put your hand on your heart, and tell me if you’d really feel quite the same to Eunice or to David if you knew they had crept treacherously into a house to which they had right of entry, tiptoed up to the chair of an old helpless man, and pulled his muffler tight around his neck.
“Can you see David doing it?” he pressed her. “David, who is kind, who has spent most of his life nursing the sick?”
“I never said I could see him doing it!” she cried. “He wouldn’t! he couldn’t!”
“Aha! and why? Why should you be so quick to say that, if it were a good thing to do? And, if it weren’t a good thing—if he wouldn’t, he couldn’t—how could you feel the same to him, supposing he had done it?”
“That’s a trap,” she said at last. “It isn’t fair.”
“Because it makes you admit you would feel differently?”
“Because it takes a thing I said to you, and uses it as if I felt it about myself.”
“Then you shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”
“Heads you win, tails I lose. Are you always right? I’m sorry for your wife.”
“That’s what auntie said. However: she can take very good care of herself, bless her.”
“Who, auntie?”
“Both of ’em. But I meant my wife.”
She was looking past him again.
“Was that how father was killed? With his muffler?”
“Looks like it.”
“How can you tell? How d’you know it wasn’t an accident?”
He told her about the position of the chair, and the medical evidence.
“I don’t see how you can be sure,” she persisted. “You can’t prove it.”
“No.”
“Will they have to decide at the inquest?”
“They will.”
“You’re not to go badgering mother,” she flung at him. “Trying to trip her up, and worrying her. She isn’t fit for it. Dr. Carter will tell you so.”
“Why should I want to trip her up?” Ellis asked.
“You want to make out that someone did it.”
“As I told you, your mother has an alibi. She can bring witnesses to say she wasn’t there.”
“Will I be asked a lot of horrid questions?”
“You’ll be asked what you were doing, and presumably you’ll give the same answers you gave before.”
“It’s hateful. I don’t see why we should be stood up there, for everyone to stare at.”
“I assure you, there’s no court in the country where you’d have so much in your favour.”
“How do you mean?”
“My dear girl, every man, woman and child in the village is on your side, yours and your mother’s. One hundred per cent. If you’d been seen pulling both ends of the muffler, they’d find that you were tying it for him, or pulling him out of the draught. No: you’re all right. Don’t go sulky, that’s all. Just stand up straight, and answer what they ask you. Don’t do your fury act, either.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Don’t tell the coroner you think it’s a good thing Matt’s no more.”
“I’m not going to be a hypocrite, for anyone. If he asks me what I think, I shall tell him.”
“Well, if you take my advice, you won’t volunteer it.”
“I thought I had to swear to tell the truth.”
“In reply to questions, yes. He won’t ask you that one. Don’t bristle at me, girl. The court will want to make everything easy for you. Don’t hinder them out of pure cussedness. The only effect it would have would be to make them think you knew more than you should, and were trying to shield someone else.”
“Who?”
“David. Eunice. Anyone. Don’t take my advice: take auntie’s. She’s as wise as a vanload of chimpanzees.”
Joan smiled in spite of herself. “Are chimpanzees wise?”
“They look it. She’ll give you good advice, anyway. This inquest is going to be all right for you, if you let it alone. Nobody but you can make it go wrong.”
“Don’t frighten me.” Her eyes were wide again. “It’s beastly of you.”
“I’ll do more than frighten you in a minute. I’ll smack you, damned hard.”
“You dare!”
“Talk sense, then. All I tell you is, if you have the wit to keep quiet and answer the questions they will ask you, and not go blurting out a whole lot they won’t, you’ll be all right.”
“How do you know they won’t ask me?”
“ ’Cos they won’t want to know. All they care about is to make out it was an accident and save the fair name of West Nattering.”
“Why shouldn’t they?”