“Nine o’clock. Not often she’d be later than that. Come nine o’clock I’m in my bed, and she knows it.”
“And if she should be any later, would you sit up for her?”
“Not for her nor for no one,” said Mrs. Maple in an obstinate voice. “I’ve got to have my rest. Nine o’clock I’m in my bed and I won’t go from it.”
“Then if she came back after nine?”
“She’d find the key under the mat same as I put it when she goes in to Melbury for the pictures.”
“And where was the key this morning, Mrs. Maple?”
She said in a voice with a sudden quaver in it,
“Under the mat-same as I put it when I went upstairs.”
“So she didn’t come in?”
Mrs. Maple had recovered herself. She didn’t know why she had had that moment when everything seemed to shake. She was all right again now. She said,
“Stands to reason she didn’t-not if the key was under the mat.”
CHAPTER 18
The church clock struck again. It certainly sounded as if it was right overhead. Frank looked at his watch. A quarter to seven. Mr. Selby would doubtless be at the Holly Tree indulging in darts and the social glass. Mrs. Selby would, however, be at home.
He walked down the lane with Miss Silver. The house, when they arrived at it, could be discerned as a bungalow, and he could definitely smell the hens. There being no barking dog to announce their arrival, he used a knocker with a modern gimcrack feel about it. There was a pattering of footsteps and one of the casement windows on the right was pushed open a little way. A nervous voice said,
“Is there anyone there? Who is it?”
It was Miss Silver who answered.
“Mrs. Selby? May we come in? I think you may know me by sight. My name is Silver, and I am staying with Mrs. Merridew.”
Mrs. Selby sounded relieved.
“Oh, yes-of course-I’ve seen you with her. Oh, yes-Miss Silver.”
She came pattering round to the door and opened it. There was no light in the passage behind her, but at the far end a door stood open to a lighted room.
“You will excuse me for keeping you waiting, Miss Silver- and-and-”
“Mr. Abbott,” said Miss Silver in her most reassuring voice.
Mrs. Selby caught her breath in a nervous manner.
“Miss Silver and Mr. Abbott-you must excuse me-but when Mr. Selby is out I just like to see who is at the door before I open it.”
Miss Silver said, “A most prudent step,” and they all went down the passage to the lighted room.
Everything in it was new. The fact struck upon the eye and made rather the same effect as a painting without light or shade. There was a crimson carpet with a striking and quite hideous pattern resembling green and yellow tadpoles, now thinly scattered, now densely clustered. There was a suite covered in green plushette, curtains of crimson chenille, and two very large blue vases on the mantelpiece. The overhead light streamed down through an inverted bowl of pink glass.
As she closed the door and turned to her visitors Mrs. Selby wore an air of modest pride. She did not share Mr. Selby’s delight in a country life, but this room was a quite undoubted solace. There wasn’t a thing in it that hadn’t been bought new when they came here-nothing old, nothing shabby, nothing used until you were sick and tired of the sight of it. She came forward, a small woman, rather bent, and looking older than the jovial Mr. Selby, but then she had a worrying disposition and the delicate skin which takes on lines before it need. She had on a bright blue skirt and an equally bright pink jumper. Her hair showed hardly any grey.
Miss Silver said in her pleasant voice,
“This is very kind of you, Mrs. Selby. Mr. Abbott and I are making some enquiries with regard to Miss Holiday. I am sure you must be most concerned on her behalf.”
The tears sprang into Mrs. Selby’s faded eyes. She produced a handkerchief with a bunch of flowers embroidered across the corner and dabbed.
“Oh, yes, I am. We can’t think what has happened to her, Mr. Selby and I. We are most distressed. You see, he is out a good deal. Gentlemen do like a bit of society, and he goes up to the Holly Tree for his game of darts most evenings. So then he has always said to me, ‘You have in anyone you like-there’s no need to be moping alone’, and Miss Holiday being so near, only a step up the lane-well, I asked her in, and after a bit she’d come once or twice in the week, and nice for both of us.”
Miss Silver sat primly upright in one corner of the crimson settee. She wore her black cloth coat, but had loosened the warm fur tippet which made it so cozy in a wind. Her hands were encased in black woollen gloves, and her neat pale features shaded by the black felt hat which had now been her second-best for a couple of years. A small bunch of purple stock and mignonette nestled among the loops of ribbon with which it was trimmed.
Frank Abbott had seated himself in a chair on the left of the fire. He spoke now for the first time.
“Did Miss Holiday come and see you last night?”
Mrs. Selby turned her eyes on him. They must have been pretty eyes once, but the colour had gone out of them, and even the few tears she had just shed had reddened the lids.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “she came in about seven and we had a cup of tea together.”
“And did she seem just as usual?”
“Oh, yes, she did-except that-” She broke off, the handkerchief at her eyes again.
“Except what?”
“It wasn’t anything-only-”
He said with quiet pertinacity,
“Only-”
“Well, it wasn’t anything at all, only there had been a few words with Mrs. Bolder up at Crewe House where she goes to oblige.”
“Do you know what the words were about?”
Mrs. Selby became more animated than he had seen her.
“They don’t need to be about anything when it’s Mrs. Bolder,” she said. “Dreadful to have a temper like she has, and all for nothing.”
“Do you know what it was about this time?”
Mrs, Selby shook her head.
“Something to do with making up a fire as far as I could tell, but I tried to turn her thoughts from it.”
“Was she upset?”
“Well, not to say upset-you really couldn’t say as much as that. Just talking about Mrs. Bolder having such a temper and never knowing what would set it off. And then we had our cup of tea and she started telling me all about that Lady Rowena she used to be companion to, and how she never thought she’d come down to going out to oblige.”
“She was depressed, then?”
Mrs. Selby looked surprised.
“Well no, not depressed. It always cheers her up talking about Lady Rowena. She likes talking about her.”
Miss Silver said,
“Was she quite cheerful when she went away?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Silver.”
“Mrs. Selby, at what time did she leave you?”
“It would be just before nine o’clock. Oh, Miss Silver-you don’t think anything has happened to her, do you? She was quite pleased, and she thought she must be going because of Mrs. Maple not liking her to be out after nine-only the night she’d go into Melbury to the pictures, and rather a fuss about that. And it’s nothing but a step up the lane-oh, I don’t see how anything could have happened to her when it’s such a little way.”
Frank Abbott said cheerfully,
“Well, we don’t know that anything has happened to her, Mrs. Selby, but we must just go on making enquiries. Now, as you were the last person to see her, perhaps you can tell us how she was dressed.”
“Oh, she had on her blue.”
“That wouldn’t be what she was working in up at Crewe House.”
Mrs. Selby looked shocked.
“Oh, no-she wouldn’t come down here in that! This was her blue that she got last year-a very nice shade that went well with her beads.”
“She was wearing a string of beads?”