“Well?”
He lifted a hand and let it drop again upon his knee.
“That finished it. By that time I knew just about where I came in the writing line. Anyone who isn’t a fool can measure himself if he will face up to it. I was a decent second-rater, and I wasn’t going to be anything more. I could make five or six hundred a year, but I wouldn’t ever be in a position to go to your father and tell him I wanted to marry you, and that being the case, I wasn’t going to take advantage of the fact that he was dead and go to you. It sounds a bit highfalutin, but I suppose it was just my beastly pride. So I saw less of you than ever. I thought, ‘What’s the good of getting hurt?’ You see, I never thought-I never thought I had a chance.”
She said, “You let it go-”
“I suppose I did. And now-it’s too late-”
“Is it-Jerome?”
“I’m all smashed up-”
The flush which had made her look like a girl again had died away. She was very pale as she put out her hands to him and said,
“Do you still care for me? That’s the only thing that matters-if you care.”
He took the hands and held them in a grip that hurt.
“Les-”
It was half her name, and half a sob.
chapter 30
When Maggie Pell left Miss Silver she went part of the way down the back stair. At the turn she heard heavy feet coming up. She stepped back into the bathroom and saw Judy Elliot go by with a police sergeant and a tall fair young man in plain clothes. They went up, and into the corridor and along. The sound of their feet died away, a door opened and shut. Judy Elliot didn’t come back.
Maggie waited a little. A wisp of hair had come loose. She took off her cap and made sure there were no more ends. If there was a thing she was faddy about, it was her hair. All very well for Gloria to go about with it flying every way, but it wasn’t her style at all. Satin-smooth she liked it. The way some girls would go about in uniform with their hair all of a fuzz-well, she didn’t think it ought to be allowed.
When she was quite satisfied she went on down the stair and made her way to the kitchen. Mrs. Robbins had been busy when she arrived, but she couldn’t go away without seeing her. She might be in the kitchen, or in the housekeeper’s room next door. She tried the kitchen first. It was empty, but the door to the scullery stood half open, and on the far side of it there were voices-Robbins’ and Mrs. Robbins’. Well, Maggie would rather have found her alone, but you can’t always pick and choose.
She was halfway across the kitchen, when she realized that the Robbinses were having words. Nothing so very out of the way about that when all was said and done. It was Maggie’s opinion that Mrs. Robbins had done a bad day’s work for herself when she married, and if a girl couldn’t do better than that she’d best stay single. Give and take was one thing, but to have a man lay down the law to you till you couldn’t call your soul your own was what there wasn’t any need to put up with, not if you set a right value on yourself.
Robbins was undoubtedly laying down the law.
“Police in the house, and everyone knowing about it! And Mr. Jerome giving them leave to carry out a search! If Mr. Pilgrim was here he’d not have let them across the doorstep. They’re in Mr. Jerome’s room now for all I know. ‘I’ve given them leave,’ he says, ‘and they can start on my room first.’ And him the master of the house!”
Maggie Pell shared his horror. So that was what the police were doing upstairs. A good murder on the front page of your paper was all very well, but when it came down to searching people’s bedrooms in a house like Pilgrim’s Rest-well, it did bring it home to you and no mistake. She wondered if they’d search all the rooms, and if they did, whatever would Miss Netta say? She heard Mrs. Robbins give a sort of sniffing sob, and then Robbins again, very angry.
“What’s the good of that? I tell you it’s the end!”
“Don’t speak like that!”
“I’ll speak how I like, and you’ll listen! And this is what I’ve got to say-you stop all this crying and whining about someone that’s better dead!”
Her sharp cry stopped him there.
“Alfred!”
“Don’t you Alfred me! He ruined your daughter, didn’t he? And he’s dead and damned, and nobody to thank for it but himself, and you go snivelling about ‘poor Mr. Henry’!”
“Alfred-” It was just a frightened gasp.
Maggie was frightened too. She wished she was anywhere else. She wished she had never come, but she didn’t seem able to go. She heard Mrs. Robbins break into bitter weeping. She heard the sound of a blow, and a wincing cry. She moved forward a step or two. She couldn’t just stand there and hear a woman treated like that.
And then, short of the scullery door, Robbins’ voice halted her. It wasn’t loud any more, but it was all the worse for that. He said,
“Shut up! Do you hear-shut up! And you keep shut up-do you hear? I tell you the police think I did it, and the way you’re going on is the way to make them think it. ‘What’s she carrying on like that for?’ they’ll say. ‘What’s anyone want to carry on like that for if they haven’t got something on their mind? And what’s she got on her mind?’ they’ll say. ‘Why him’-that’s what they’ll say. ‘And she knows who done it. And who would she know about if it wasn’t her husband? He done it’-that’s what they’re going to say. Do you want to put the rope round my neck? Because that’s what you’re doing. I tell you they think I did your damned Mr. Henry in. I heard them talking in the study, and that’s what they think-they think it was me!”
Mrs. Robbins called out wildly.
“Was it?” she said-“was it?”
Maggie felt the trickle of sweat on her temples. She couldn’t have taken another step forward to save her life. She heard Gloria’s voice calling her in the passage.
“Mag-where are you? Maggie!”
She turned round and ran out of the kitchen.
chapter 31
Judy Elliot turned to the right at the head of the stairs and walked along the corridor a little ahead of Frank Abbott and the sergeant to the door of Jerome Pilgrim’s room. She threw it open and stood back for them to go in. As they passed her, she took as much care to avoid looking at them as if they had been some plague come into the house. She stepped back lest they should brush against her.
It is not pleasant for a young man who is in love to be treated like this. Frank Abbott had a normally high opinion of himself. The girls whom from time to time he met, flirted and danced with, had done nothing to reduce it. Judy’s attitude was galling in the extreme. What it amounted to was, “It’s a low job searching people’s rooms, and you’re a low hound to do it.”
As this idea forced an entrance, an icy anger cauterized his hurt. He walked past her not only as if she wasn’t there, but as if she never had been there as far as he was concerned. Judy Elliot in fact just didn’t exist. He had a job to do, and that was that.
Judy shut the door on them with laudable self-control. She could have banged it with the best heart in the world, but she remembered that she was a housemaid and restrained the impulse. She turned, to meet Lona Day coming out of her room across the passage.
“What’s going on, Judy?” Lona’s voice was distressed, her look anxious.
Judy’s cheeks burned and her eyes were bright.
“They’re searching the house.”
“Oh-how unpleasant!”
“Horrid!”
“But why? What are they looking for? What do they think they’re going to find?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
A child of three could have seen that she had lost her temper and wasn’t in any hurry to find it. Miss Day gazed at her soulfully and said,