“We’d better be getting along, hadn’t we?”
She said, “No-wait! There’s something I want to say. I was thinking it would be better, it would make things easier, if you don’t mind saying you were engaged to me-just whilst all this is going on. We could break it off afterwards.”
He gave her a strange hard look. Courage-yes, she certainly had that. He said,
“A little sudden, isn’t it? Are you, by any chance, protecting my reputation?”
Her eyes had a piteous simplicity.
“I don’t know. Not if you don’t want me to. I just thought it would be easier for Jimmy-and everyone. I thought if we said we were engaged, nobody could say you had come down because of Lois, and we could break it off whenever you liked-after it was all over.”
He was most deeply moved, but his face showed nothing. It remained dark and intent. His voice was quiet and ordinary.
“All right, my dear, if that’s what you want. I think perhaps you’re right-it will make it easier for Jimmy. And now let’s go.”
CHAPTER 18
Miss Silver took up the telephone receiver. There was a considerable buzzing on the line. A high, young voice said, “So I told him I’d never speak to him again-” and ceased abruptly. Miss Silver speculated with mild interest as to whether this was a sidelight on the love affairs of the rather spectacular young woman who had recently moved into the flat below her own. She had encountered her in the lift, but had never heard her voice, or she would not have had to speculate.
The buzzing continued. In the midst of it her own name sounded very faintly. She at once repeated it in a precise manner. Quite suddenly the line was clear. A man’s voice said, dragging on the words,
“I want to speak to Miss Silver.”
“This is Miss Silver speaking.”
The drag became more evident.
“She’s dead. You said it was a trick. But she’s dead.”
Miss Silver’s face assumed a grave expression.
“Is that Mr. Latter?”
The voice said, “She’s dead.” It was like listening to a gramophone record which is running down.
She said, “Dear me!” And then, “I am very sorry indeed, Mr. Latter. Is there anything I can do?”
“You said-you could-come down-”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Is that what you wish me to do?”
“You said-you would-” Jimmy Latter’s voice faded out. A faraway click suggested that he had replaced the receiver- perhaps to plunge his head in his hands and sit there waiting.
It never took Miss Silver very long either to make up her mind or to complete her preparations for a journey. She would travel in her afternoon dress, with the black cloth coat which she had had for so many years that its waisted style had been in and out of fashion quite a number of times. Since the stuff showed no sign of wear, the idea of discarding it would have shocked her. In her shabby but serviceable suitcase she packed a silk day-dress for wear in the evening-it was as a matter of fact her last summer’s best-and a genuinely antique black velvet coatee as a provision against possible draughts-country houses were sadly prone to draughts. In view of a possible change in the weather, she also packed a small fur tippet, rather pale with age but astonishingly well preserved.
It would be unbecoming to pry into a lady’s underwear. Miss Silver’s was sensible, warm, and hard wearing-the stockings of black thread, the dressing-gown of crimson flannel trimmed with cream crochet lace of her own making. There were also a pair of slippers, the beaded house-shoes, and, carefully wrapped in a white silk handkerchief, a worn and well-read Bible. None of these things took long to assemble, nor did the invaluable Hannah Meadows require any instructions. After keeping house for Miss Silver for twenty years she took everything just as it came with imperturbable calm.
Miss Silver caught her train comfortably. She had time to send a telegram to announce the hour of its arrival. She had time to settle herself in a corner seat with her suit-case in the rack overhead. After which she removed her gloves, took her knitting out of a shabby capacious handbag, and went on with Derek’s second stocking.
She had a very pleasant journey. A delightful middle-aged lady who had recently returned from France gave her an extremely interesting account of social conditions there, and the agreeable gentleman in the opposite corner was able to contribute a most informative description of the island of Cyprus. Really quite an instructive afternoon.
The station for Rayle is Weston, a slightly larger place some three miles away. When Miss Silver alighted a tall, dark young man advanced to meet her, introducing himself as Antony Latter.
“Jimmy is my cousin. He is too knocked over to come and meet you himself.”
As he picked up her suit-case and led the way through the booking-hall to where his car was waiting, Antony concluded that poor old Jimmy must have had a complete mental breakdown. Nothing else would account for importing this dowdy elderly spinster into his tragic affairs. She looked like a composite portrait of the Victorian governess, and she talked like it too-if you could imagine a portrait endowed with speech. With the feeling that her arrival was just above the last straw, he bestowed her and her luggage and drove away.
Rather to his surprise, she chose to sit beside him in the front of the car. He was irritatedly aware of her, prim and upright in an impossible hat, a shabby black umbrella depending from her wrist, her hands in worn kid gloves clasped upon a bulging bag.
They had driven perhaps for half a mile, when she turned to him with a slight dry cough.
“Would it be possible for you to draw up for a little, Mr. Latter? Your cousin was too agitated to give me any information. I know nothing except that Mrs. Latter is dead, and that he wished me to come down. I should be glad to have a simple statement of what has occurred.”
They were in a lane with hedges on either side. The afternoon was fine though not warm. September had thinned the sunshine. There was already a breath of damp from the fields on either side, even a hint that the damp might turn to frost before the morning. The hips and haws in the hedgerows were ripening fast. As he stopped the car unwillingly he resented the parody on his conversation with Julia. They had talked in a lane this morning. She had sat where Miss Silver was sitting now. She had had the mist in her hair. She had looked at him with tragic eyes and asked him whether he would mind if they were engaged-“Just whilst this is going on.”
The travesty repelled him. He avoided looking at Miss Silver as he said,
“I’ll tell you as much as I know. But it’s secondhand-I wasn’t here.”
“If you will be so good.”
She listened attentively whilst he repeated what Julia had told him. He did not go beyond the immediate facts surrounding Lois’ death-the evening meal; the two cups of coffee; who were present in the drawing-room; Julia’s absence after she had brought in the tray; her finding Lois unconscious at ten o’clock. When he had finished she said,
“Thank you.” And then, “The police, of course, have been notified?”
“Yes.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“May I enquire, Mr. Antony, whether they have been informed of Mrs. Latter’s previous attacks of sickness? Do they know she had declared that someone was attempting to poison her?”
“Yes.”
“Was it Mr. Latter who informed them?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Why did she want to know that? It startled him. He turned, glanced at her, and met a look of such direct intelligence that he received something like an electric shock.
“Then who gave them this information, Mr. Antony?”
“A girl called Gladys Marsh-Mrs. Marsh. She’s the wife of a man in the village, a tenant of my cousin’s, but she was staying in the house and more or less acting as maid to Mrs. Latter.”
The look of intelligence became quite piercing.