‘Then find out! I’m not staying here to be pointed at! I’ll take what you’ve got and be off! You can send me more later! Did Miss Olivia leave you anything?’
She would have liked to lie, but she was too much afraid. Her eyes widened in her dark, anxious face.
‘I – she -’
‘She did! How much?’
‘It was just – some money – in a parcel – ’
‘I said, “How much?” ’
She moistened her lips with her tongue.
‘It was – a hundred pounds – in notes.’
He reached across the table and caught her by the wrist.
‘You are lying! Even she wouldn’t do that – after forty years!’
She tried to step back, but he held her.
‘There is money to come when the lawyer has settled everything. An annuity – for me.’
‘How much?’
‘I do not know. They say I will be taken care of. There is something for you too – a parcel with money in it. There was one for you and one for me. She gave them to me when she was dying.’
He let go of her wrist.
‘Get them!’
She went without a word, her mind in a confusion of fear. She had always been afraid of Joseph – always. But at Underhill there had been Miss Olivia over them both, and even Joseph had been afraid of Miss Olivia. Now there was no one but him and her, and the money between them. He would take the money, hers as well as his, and she would be left. That was better than if he made her go with him – much, much better. There was a trembling in her limbs when she thought that he might make her go with him.
She was talking to herself as she went up the stairs.
‘No, Anna, no, he does not want you – he has never wanted you. And you need not go. You can say that you must stay here and get the money that is to come from the lawyer. Yes, you can say that. But he will not want you to come.’
The money was in the room that she was using, put away under the mattress of the bed. She got it out now. There were two parcels, done up with paper and string and written on in Miss Olivia’s hand, ‘Anna’ on the one, and ‘Joseph’ on the other. The packet marked ‘Anna’ was much thinner and flatter than the other. She had opened it and done it up again, so that she knew exactly what was in it – twenty five-pound notes doubled in half and laid in a little cardboard box. She had seen the box in Miss Olivia’s hand a week before she died.
The other parcel was much bulkier. It too had been prepared beforehand, only the name had been put on it after Miss Olivia had been taken ill. Anna’s legacy was already addressed, but it was a dying hand that had written Joseph’s name.
He looked up as she came back into the kitchen with the packages in either hand. He had lighted a cigarette, and the smoke and the acrid smell of it hung upon the air. He rolled his own cigarettes and he liked them strong. He looked at her package first.
‘You have opened it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You said there was a hundred pounds.’
‘Yes.’
He took his own and tore the paper off. A bundle of dirty one-pound notes came into view and he stared at them. They might have come from some low gambling dive. They reeked of tobacco. It was difficult to believe that Miss Olivia could have brought herself to handle them. There was no message, no enclosure of any kind, only his name on the outside wrapping. He laid down his cigarette on the table and began to count them. The notes must have got damp, for they stuck to one another. He licked his forefinger to separate them. He had a trick of it when he counted money, or even when he turned the pages of a book. That the notes were rank did not disturb him unduly. The finger went to his mouth again and again.
‘Thirty – thirty-one – thirty-two – ’
He thought there would be a hundred. With Anna’s hundred, not too bad, and there was the annuity to come.
He went on with his counting.
‘Forty – forty-one – forty-two – ’
The cigarette smoke came up in his throat and nose. He waved it away.
‘Fifty – fifty-one – fifty-two – ’
He began to lose count.
‘Sixty-five – sixty-seven – sixty-nine – ’
Anna stood on the other side of the table and watched his finger rise and fall. She saw the sweat come on his brow. His voice wandered, and the notes fell from his hand. He said, ‘I’m ill.’ And then, on a gasping breath, ‘I’m – poisoned – ’ His eyes accused her. His voice would have accused Olivia Benevent, but it choked in his throat.
He was dead before the doctor came.
Chapter Forty-four
Retley buzzed. There was another inquest, and another funeral at which there would no doubt have been the usual gathering together of the morbid-minded if it had not taken place at eight o’clock in the morning and the secret very well kept. As it was, a mere handful of people drifted in to watch Anna in a long black veil stand with bowed head above Joseph Rossi’s grave. Miss Silver stood beside her, extending the kindly support she was so well fitted to give. She had removed the bunch of flowers from her second-best hat, which like all her other hats was plain in shape and black in colour, and had further satisfied her sense of decorum by the substitution of a plain black woollen scarf for the yellowish fur tippet which usually completed her winter coat. She would not let Anna go through such an ordeal alone, and nothing could have been kinder than voice and manner as, the ceremony completed, she led her back to where her niece Nellie awaited them with breakfast laid out on the table and a good strong brew of tea. Nellie had been perfectly willing to come down, and she would take Anna back with her, but go to Joseph Rossi’s funeral she would not.
‘And I’m sure it’s ever so good of you to do it, Miss Silver, but I couldn’t, not for anything in the world. If ever anyone was well rid of a murdering good-for-nothing, it’s poor Auntie, and the less said about it the better.’
Candida saw them before they left Retley. Anna was to have a pension, but to her tearful protestations that all she wanted was to come back and serve her dear Miss Candida there was no response.
Candida Sayle had very little response for anyone during this time. She went to Derek Burdon’s wedding, which was also at eight in the morning, and she kissed him and Jenny and wished them well, but her lips were cold and her eyes looked far away. She sat in Mr. Tampling’s office and discussed the necessary business in what was almost a mechanical manner. Since she would never live at Underhill, would he please suggest what could be done with the place. He looked at her with concern. She was not wearing black, but in her plain grey coat and skirt she had the air of a mourning ghost. The bright colour which he remembered with admiration was all gone. There were violent shadows under the eyes which seemed to look past him.
‘The house has been in the family for a very long time.’
She said, ‘Too long – ’ And then, ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with it – ever. Or with the things that were found there – that horrible Treasure.’
‘It is extremely valuable, Miss Sayle.’
‘Yes. It has cost people’s lives – I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I thought perhaps the Retley museum – ’
He felt a secret excitement and satisfaction, but he constrained himself to say soberly,
‘It might be considered. But you should not do anything in a hurry. In any case, probate must be obtained before you can make any disposal. Since the things may be considered to be in the nature of heirlooms, it may not be in your power to make an outright gift, but the museum would doubtless be very glad to have them on loan, and meanwhile they are perfectly safe in the County Bank.’
It was after this interview that Stephen found it increasingly difficult to see her. With arrears of work to be overtaken, his time was not his own, and when he did arrive at Miss Arnold’s house in the evening it would be to find that Candida had gone to bed early, or that she sat through the meal eating practically nothing, only to slip away as soon as it was over.