There are ways of letting people know when they are not wanted. It came home to Lucy Cunningham that Mrs. Hubbard would prefer her room to her company. She went through into the drawing-room and began to straighten the chairs and tidy up, a thing she could never do the night before because of Henry sitting up late and not liking to be disturbed. She had just finished, when she heard him come out of his room. She had left the door open, and by moving a very little she could see as well as hear. He had a slow, heavy tread. It was no slower or heavier than usual. He came across the landing with an abstracted air and on down the stairs without looking to right or left. When she came out to meet him in the hall he took no other notice than to say, “I’m down,” after which he proceeded into the dining-room, leaving the door ajar behind him.
All the time she was getting his hot plate and the sausage she had been keeping warm the thoughts in her head went round and round-Henry or Nicholas-Nicholas or Henry. She had watched them both come down the stairs, and neither of them had so much as glanced at the step where she had stumbled, or at the balustrade where the trip-cord had been stretched. Nicholas had come down in his usual rush, and Henry in his own deliberate way. Neither of them had done anything at all that was different from what she had seen them do year in, year out all the time that they had been together-Nicholas tearing down as a schoolboy, Henry, young and in love with Lydia Crewe, moving as if he had come only half way out of a dream. It might have been any day as long ago as that or in the years between.
But if either of them had fastened that cord to trip her to her death, he wouldn’t have left it there to be found in the morning. There must have been some time in the night when one of them had come to the top of the stair and looked over. But the cord would not have been there for him to see, because she had taken it away and burned it in her bedroom grate. So then whoever it was would have turned round and gone back to his bed again.
She had not closed her bedroom door. She did not think that she had slept. Could a man move so silently that she would not hear him? She looked back over the hours of the night, and she wasn’t sure. There were stretches of time which were like some dreadful dream. She couldn’t be sure whether the dream had crossed the boundaries of sleep or only trembled on the edge. She took Henry his sausage, and found him reading the paper and dawdling over a brown mess of cereal.
CHAPTER 23
Making the beds with Miss Cunningham, Mrs. Hubbard was perfectly well aware that she was not in her usual. Under an appearance of great neatness and restraint she herself was one of the most inquisitive women in Hazel Green. She had a nose for a secret comparable only to that of a ferret on the trail, but all very quietly, very decorously, and the prize when attained to be shared only with the chosen few and under pledge of secrecy. When Miss Cunningham took the side of the bed which enabled her to keep her back to the windows, she was at once aware that this had been done in order to conceal the fact that she had been crying and that she had passed a wakeful night. When brushing down the stairs she did not fail to observe a slight flattening at the edges of two of the balusters. It was an old staircase, but at some time it had been painted. Where the flattening had occurred the paint on at least one edge had flaked away. It was perfectly plain to Mrs. Hubbard that something tight had been tied round the baluster. Now what would anyone want to do that for? And blessed if there wasn’t just such another mark on the far side of the step. The stairs ran down without a break, the balusters on either side. You couldn’t get from it but that someone had stretched a cord across the stairs-as nasty and spiteful a trick as she had ever heard of. Must have been some boy. There were those she could name that wouldn’t think twice of breaking anyone’s leg if they were up to a lark, but how in the world would a boy get in to play off one of his jokes on Miss Cunningham, or why would he want to? There wasn’t anyone with what you could call a spite against her, not that she knew about-and there wasn’t much that she didn’t know.
When she had finished the stairs she took her dustpan and brush round the hall, and right underneath where that mark was on the baluster the brush picked up a little curly piece of twine-some of that black garden stuff that gets used for tying up creepers and such. She put it in the pocket of her overall and went up to Miss Cunningham’s bedroom. There had been no fire in the grate, but something had been burned there. When she picked up the piece of tarred twine it came to her that there had been ash in the bedroom grate, and she hadn’t to look at it twice before she could see what it was before it come to that- twine, same as the piece she’d got in her pocket. There was a bit with the very shape of it in the grey ash, and when she raked the stuff over there was a knot that hadn’t burned at all. Mrs. Hubbard put it in her pocket with the bit she had picked up in the hall. It was altogether past her to think of any reason why Miss Cunningham should have cut the twine from the baluster and burned it, but that was what she had done. She had cut it-you could see the mark of the scissors close up by the knot- and she had burned it in her bedroom grate.
All the time that she was doing her work, Mrs. Hubbard kept on putting two and two together. The trouble was she couldn’t get them to make anything, and it was pain and grief to her. It wasn’t until she was going away at half past two that she noticed something which excited her curiosity to a really passionate degree. Miss Cunningham had come out onto the back-door step to ask her whether they needed another packet of Vim. It had been a grey morning, but the sun was out now. It slanted in across the step and across Miss Cunningham’s ankles. There hadn’t been anything to notice in the house, which was dark enough like a lot of these old houses were, but out here with the sun right on it, you just couldn’t help noticing the weal. Just about six inches up from the right ankle it was, and so red the stocking didn’t hide it, not out here in the light. With the sideways look which took in a great deal more than it seemed to, Mrs. Hubbard decided that there was quite a piece of swelling too. She didn’t risk more than the one glance, and it was in her usual rather mousy little voice that she replied to the question about the Vim that they didn’t really want it till next week, but no harm if Miss Cunningham was putting her order in.
Mr. Hubbard worked in Melbury. He took a wrapped lunch with him which he supplemented at the canteen. It was therefore nothing to anyone if Mrs. Hubbard liked to drop in on Florrie Hunt at the White Cottage. There was a faint faraway connection between them, and Florrie would be pleased enough to give her a cup of tea, and perhaps the latest about the finding of poor Miss Holiday’s body. The White Cottage being right at the corner of Vicarage Lane, there couldn’t be anything either coming or going but what Florrie would be bound to notice it.
She got her cup of tea, but she didn’t get such a very warm welcome. Florrie was in one of her moods-she could see that at a glance. Put her in mind of a house with all the blinds down and the people away. Nothing but a yes or no out of her, and not at all easy to get either. She handed up her cup to be filled a second time and began to tell Florrie about the marks on the balusters at the Dower House and the weal on Miss Cunningham’s leg. By the time she had come to the end of her story Florrie was looking at her for the first time.
“Sounds like nonsense to me,” she said.
Mrs. Hubbard sipped her tea.
“Well then, it wasn’t,” she said. “Plain as plain the marks were. And the bit of string in the hall-what would anyone be doing with that nasty tarred-stuff indoors? And more of it burned in the bedroom grate. Just look here if you don’t believe me!”