Mrs. Harbord still had that shaking hand pressed against her lips. It came down now and went out groping to the arm of the chair. She said in a startled voice,
‘Ellen Kean – did she send you? I thought – ’
‘No, she did not send me. You asked her to come and see you because you were very ill and you had something on your mind, but when she came you did not tell her very much.’
Mrs. Harbord said in a choked voice,
‘She came in – and she sat there – and she didn’t believe a word I said. She come like it was her Christian duty to come, and because I sent for her. She’d gone up in the world, and I’d gone down, but we went to school together. There isn’t much I don’t know about Ellen Kean, and her duty is what she’d always do. But when it comes to bowels and mercies, Ellen hasn’t got them, and that’s a fact. Sat there and looked at me as cold as ice and told me I was talking nonsense. So I didn’t have any more to say.’
‘That was when you told her that the stories about Alan Thompson were not true?’
Mrs. Harbord’s voice sharpened.
‘I don’t say there wasn’t plenty that might have been true. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain, and the way the young women ran after him was enough to turn anyone’s head. And not only the young ones neither, but I’m not talking about that. Only what I had on my mind and what I told Ellen Kean was gospel truth, and she hadn’t any cause to disbelieve. me. You said you didn’t come from her?’
Miss Silver made a slight negative movement of the head. Her voice, her look, her manner were having a tranquillizing effect. Mrs. Harbord’s breathing was more normal and she no longer clutched the arm of her chair. The time had come for a more open approach. She said,
‘I am not acquainted with Mrs. Kean. It is Mr. Puncheon who has asked me to come and see you. He is very much troubled at the stigma which rests upon his stepson’s name. It would be a great relief to his mind if he could know that it was not deserved. His late wife felt the whole thing very deeply. He feels that he owes it to her to do what he can to clear her son. It was said, I believe, that Alan Thompson had stolen money and a diamond brooch from the Miss Benevents before his disappearance, and what you told Mrs. Kean was that he was innocent.’
Mrs. Harbord flushed.
‘I told her, and she didn’t believe me!’
‘You told her that he had never left Underhill.’
Mrs. Harbord began to cry.
‘I didn’t ought to have said that. And I wouldn’t, only for her sitting there being so unbelieving. Because it stands to reason he must have gone. Only he didn’t take Miss Cara’s diamond brooch, for I saw it afterwards, lying there just inside the drawer of Miss Olivia’s looking-glass – one of those old-fashioned ones, up on a stand with a lot of little drawers, and she always kept the middle one locked. Only this time it wasn’t. The keys were there sticking in it, and my duster caught them and pulled it out. And there was the brooch they said he took – a kind of a spray with diamond flowers and leaves. Miss Cara wore it a lot of an evening, and for best. And there it was in Miss Olivia’s drawer, and Mr. Alan’s coin that Miss Cara gave him lying there with it.’
‘What was this coin?’
Mrs. Harbord’s voice dropped.
‘It was some kind of an old one – gold by the look of it. And it had a hole in it with a ring through it so it could be hung on a chain. He wore it like that round his neck. Miss Cara gave him the chain too. And there they were in the drawer, the two of them. Oh, ma’am – that’s what I’ve got on my mind! He’d never have left them!’
‘Why do you say that, Mrs. Harbord?’
‘Miss Cara, she told him it was a luck charm. He showed it to me one day when I was up doing his room – pulled it out of the neck of his shirt and told me all about it. Very free and open he was. “Look at what Miss Cara had given me!” he said. “Hundreds of years old and a real mascot. I’ll have good luck as long as I wear it, and I can’t be hurt by wound nor poison. Nice to know that, isn’t it, in case anyone ever had the idea of sticking a knife into me or putting something into my tea.” I said, “Mercy, Mr. Alan! Who would do that!” and he laughed and said, “Oh, you never can tell.” Well, do you know, not a month after that something broke in the car when he was driving it, and it went smash into a wall at the bottom of Hill Lane. And he come out of it without a scratch. “What did I tell you, Mrs. Harbord?” he said. “That charm of Miss Cara’s is a mascot all right. I ought to have been killed, and here I am without a scratch. You won’t catch me leaving it off in a hurry.” Which was vain superstition, but I could see that he meant it. And not a week later they were saying he had run off with goodness knows how much money and that brooch of Miss Cara’s, and I can’t say anything about the money except that it’s foolishness to keep a lot in the house – just asking for trouble to my way of thinking! But that brooch of Miss Cara’s he never took for I saw it with my own eyes in Miss Olivia’s drawer a matter of ten days after that, and the coin and the chain was there along with it like I told you. And a week later the two ladies went off abroad. And why would Mr. Alan leave that coin of his behind?’
Miss Silver said in a considering voice,
‘If he had been found out in a theft he might have been asked to give it back, and the brooch too. The Miss Benevents might not have wished to prosecute but they would certainly have required the restitution of the brooch, and if they set a special value on the coin and chain they might have required him to give that back too. It could have happened that way, Mrs. Harbord.’
‘Well then, it didn’t! Not to Miss Cara’s knowledge anyhow, for the very day before they went abroad I was coming along the passage, and there was the two of them in Mr. Alan’s room, and the door on the jar. Miss Cara was crying, and Miss Olivia was scolding her. Very harsh she spoke, and I thought it was a shame. “You ought to have more pride,” she said. “Crying for a thief and a runaway! A common thief that could steal from those that trusted him!” And Miss Cara said, “If he wanted the brooch he could have had it. I would have given him anything he wanted.” And Miss Olivia said very sharp, “Well, you gave him too much. And what did he do but put ideas into his head, and when he saw he’d gone too far he went off with what he could lay his hands on, and you can say goodbye to your brooch and to the lucky charm you set so much store by, for you’ll never see them again.” And Miss Cara cried fit to break her heart and said she wouldn’t care for anything as long as he would come back.’
‘And what did Miss Olivia say to that?’
Mrs. Harbord’s voice dropped to a solemn whisper.
‘She said, “You’ll never see him again.” ’
Chapter Nine
It was when Candida had been at Underhill for a little over a week that she came back from Retley to find Miss Cara Benevent in her room. Something had been said about going to a cinema with Derek, but in the end she lunched with Stephen, and by the time Derek turned up she thought perhaps they had better go home. She didn’t really like the way that things were shaping. She told him so as they drove through the rain.
‘They’ll think I’ve been lunching with you.’
He gave her a charming smile.
‘Darling, can I help what they think?’
‘Of course you can! You don’t say so outright, but you pull things round so that it looks as if we were going to be together – and I tell you straight out, Derek, it’s got to stop.’
‘Darling, you have only to say, “Dear Aunts, I cannot tell a lie. I am not lunching with Derek, and he is not lunching with me.” ’ He made a mock serious recitation of it and ended up with a laugh. ‘At least that’s all you’ve got to say if what you want is a roof-lifting row. Personally I am all for the quiet life.’