The Silent Speaker

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Did you get your repression idea from one of yesterday’s papers? Some school I read is trying out a no-repressions term.”

  “Perhaps it’s Verity’s,” Selina had said. “They always seem trying to free their libidos there.”

  Tom had laughed.

  “That’s Verily’s version of what goes on at Rattenfield. Some day, Selina, you must meet Miss Osborne, the headmistress, she’s good value.”

  “This was a boys’ school,” Bernard had put in.

  Helen had wanted to know what paper the article on the no-repressions school was in.

  Bernard had tried to remember.

  “I think it was the News of the World.”

  “We don’t get a sight of that one,” Helen had said. “It goes straight to Mrs. Simpson and stays there.”

  Bernard had pulled on his coat and scarf and turned towards the front door.

  “I’m sure I’ve got it, Helen darling—all yesterday’s papers are still in my car.”

  Tom usually drove Selina home after a party, so it was he who had led the guests into the small front garden; before they reached the gate Bernard had come back waving a paper.

  “Found it?” Edward had asked. He had turned and called to Helen. “Write down the name of the school, we must enlist those unrepressed boys as shock troops for our cruelty week.”

  Tom had then led the way out of the gate; from the road the guests had turned to call out renewed thanks and good-byes to Helen, who, spot-lighted by the lamp fixed to the portico, still laughing at something Bernard had said, had waved the News of the World at them.

  Homeward bound the guests had discussed the evening.

  “I always enjoy dining with them,” Miriam had told George, “and when Helen is in extra good form, as she was to-night, I feel as if I’d had a pep injection.”

  George had nodded.

  “She can be radiant and to-night she was at her best.”

  In Edward’s Bentley Celia had lit two cigarettes.

  “Helen’s a lucky beast, she’s got everything.”

  Edward had taken his cigarette from her.

  “It looks that way, nothing ever seems to go wrong for those two. The unfair division of troubles has always puzzled me; I must get George on to it sometime, I suppose the Church thinks it has an answer.”

  Olivia, climbing into Anthony’s small Ford, had asked: “You didn’t mind that evening, did you?”

  Anthony had started the car.

  “I’ll never be a social type, you know that. My idea of a good evening is being at home with you. But I must say, if we have to go out I’d rather go to the Blairs’ than anywhere. How did you come across them?”

  “Through my English husband. He was at school or college with Tom, I forget which.”

  “I suppose she’s what you’d call a society beauty.”

  Olivia had laughed.

  “I should say she was neither, Tom’s just a stockbroker and, though I adore Helen, I wouldn’t say she was all that good-looking.”

  “Oh!” Anthony had turned this over in his head. “It’s a nice face.”

  Olivia had giggled.

  “What an awful thing to say about anybody.”

  “It is though,” Anthony had persisted.

  Olivia had leant against him.

  “Thank God she’s interested in nobody but Tom or I might get jealous.”

  Bernard, alone in his car, had allowed his journalistic brain to snake back through the evening’s talk. Had anything been said that would make an article? Pity I can’t use that cruelty stuff, but it isn’t me. What was it Edward had said about that thug he had got jailed? “Broken-hearted parents.” There should be something there from the mother angle only it had all been done before. He had begun to write an article in his head then he had stopped, he would have to suggest to his readers that all mothers were devoted to their children, a bore for they weren’t, in fact almost no women were equally good at both jobs—wife and mother. Lazily he had wondered about Helen. He had never thought about it before but how did Helen’s children make out? Did they get their share of their mother in spite of her devotion to Tom? Curious, Bernard had ruminated, how little, for a person I know well, I actually know Helen. Can she be as sure of herself as she appears to be? Does she never feel insecure and in need of propping up?

  * * *

  Tom, having driven Selina back to her hotel, had gone in with her for a nightcap, and had not left her until it was nearly one o’clock. Selina had then gone to bed and was deeply asleep when the telephone bell rang. Tom was on the line.

  “Selina, something ghastly has happened. Helen has killed herself.”

  Selina, half asleep, knew she must have mis-heard.

  “What’s that? What did you say, Tom?”

  “Helen’s killed herself.”

  Selina heard that time.

  “Killed herself—she couldn’t have—I mean, but why? It must have been an accident.”

  Tom’s voice was so expressionless it could have been a machine that answered.

  “It wasn’t. She’s put her head in the gas oven.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Before she got out of bed to collect the telephone directories Selina switched on the light. She felt sick and stupid and could not keep her teeth from chattering. She muttered Tom’s directions out loud to ensure she would carry them out. “Ring the children’s schools—let the people who were at dinner know—George will tell you who else ought to be told—terrible shock if it’s read in the papers . . .”

  Selina had asked whether Tom would like her to go to the schools to break the news to the children, but he was too shocked to be able to make a decision.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know. Oh God, Selina, why did she do it?”

  Selina’s commonsense was resisting accepting that Helen had done it. How could a person be in Helen’s radiant spirits one minute and in the next put their head in a gas oven?

  “It must have been an accident.”

  Tom had got some relief from an explosion of temper.

  “If you can’t talk sense, Selina, keep quiet. How could Helen put one of the drawing-room cushions in the gas oven by accident?”

  It was the first time Tom had mentioned that.

  “Put a cushion in the gas oven,” Selina had repeated stupidly.

  “Oh, do try and be helpful instead of repeating what I say,” Tom had snapped. Then, perhaps realising that Selina too was suffering from shock, struggled to make her understand what had happened: “As it was late when I got back from your hotel I took it for granted she had gone to bed, so I went straight to my dressing-room, I didn’t hurry over undressing, so God knows how long it was before I went into our room and found she wasn’t there. Then I went to look for her of course, I thought she might have gone to sleep reading that paper she got from Bernard Task. Then I smelt gas.”

  “Was she dead when you found her?”

  “I think so, I dragged her out, of course, and opened all the windows before I phoned for the doctor. He came at once and I suppose did what he could but it was no good, so he’s rung for the police.” He had broken off there. “That’s the bell, that’ll be them now.”

  Selina telephoned Verily’s school first, she knew the address but not the telephone number. While it was being looked up she gave all her thoughts to Verily, seeing her as she had last seen her on the afternoon before she returned to school. She had been wearing a lavender-coloured cotton frock which made her look more noticeably fair and pale than usual. The child had grinned at her, stretching her odd wide mouth.

  “Don’t flap, Selina. I don’t mind going back to the prison house, honestly I’m quite glad.”

  Directory gave the school telephone number, so Selina, with some difficulty because of her chattering teeth, put through her call. The telep
hone was answered by a secretary who, though sleepy at first, by the time she had grasped what Selina was saying was wide awake. She made tch-tching sounds while she considered if she was justified in disturbing the headmistress, then, deciding that she was, she told Selina to hold on, she would put her through to Miss Osborne.

  Selina knew Miss Osborne by hearsay. Her pupils called her “The Wizard” from the “Wizard of Oz.” “She looks sort of carved,” Verily had said. “You know, Selina, the opposite of you, every single hair always neat and her clothes never have one tiny crease.” Miss Osborne, Selina gathered, though deeply respected and on occasion formidable, meant a lot to Verily, though the only actual statement she had made in her favour was: “She can be all right sometimes.”

  The secretary had told Miss Osborne the facts over the house phone, so she knew what had happened.

  “What a dreadful business, Miss Grierson. Was she ill, I wonder? She was exceptionally thin.”

  Selina explained about the dinner party.

  “She is—I mean, she always was a marvellous hostess but to-night she was in such extra good form.”

  Miss Osborne got down to her share of the problem.

  “Will it be in the morning papers, do you think?”

  “I don’t know how things get into papers,” Selina confessed, “but I’ve heard journalists are clever at finding things out quickly, and Tom—Verily’s father—told me after I had telephoned you and Tim’s headmaster I was to get on to the people who came to dinner, and one of them was Bernard Task . . .”

  Miss Osborne’s interruption snapped out.

  “That man! Forget to telephone him, Miss Grierson, for he’ll be sure to ring his newspaper.”

  Selina was thankful to be directed.

  “All right, I won’t.” Her teeth were chattering more than ever. “I expect Tom forgot he was on a paper—should I come down and tell Verily?”

  Miss Osborne’s voice was firm.

  “No. I’ve had to do this sort of thing before, I had a school during the war. In any case you must be on the spot.”

  “Oh, must I? Why—I mean . . .”

  Miss Osborne was able even over the telephone to take charge.

  “Where are you speaking from, Miss Grierson?” Selina explained she was in an hotel. “Oh good, then as soon as you have rung off ring for the night porter and tell him you have had a shock, and want coffee, with plenty of sugar—don’t forget that—and a very hot hot-water bottle. You understand?”

  “Yes—of course—coffee with plenty of sugar and a very hot hot-water bottle.”

  “Good. And I wouldn’t try ringing anybody else until your teeth have stopped chattering.”

  “I won’t . . . I can’t think why I’m so silly . . .”

  Miss Osborne did not answer that.

  “Listen. While you are drinking the coffee and before you telephone Tim’s school think over this point. Obviously neither the boy’s headmaster nor I will mention suicide, if we ever do, until we know more. I shall find an excuse to keep Verily out of the way of papers and day girls to-morrow morning, but I shall expect a telephone call from you.”

  “About what?”

  Miss Osborne spoke in the voice she used when explaining something to the smaller members of her junior school.

  “We may not be able to keep it from the children indefinitely that their mother killed herself, and they will want to know why.”

  “But no one knows why.”

  Miss Osborne dismissed that as nonsense.

  “There will be an answer, of course. Probably her doctor will know. But be sure to find out all you can and telephone me as early as possible to-morrow morning—if, as you say, it was suicide, and it certainly sounds like it, and I decide Verily must know the truth, I must have a reason to give her.”

  Selina, obeying instructions like a child, had drunk a cup of coffee filled generously with sugar by a solicitous ex-air-raid warden night porter, and was hugging the hot-water bottle to her stomach before she rang Tim’s headmaster. Again she was answered by a secretary, and once more what she had rung about was repeated over the house telephone. Mr. Hodgkins, the headmaster, was not known to Selina by hearsay, as was Miss Osborne, for he was not known by Tim. He had a thin, tweedy shape, for Tim saw him in class and at prayers, and he caught enormous salmon, for the school said so, but otherwise he was to Tim as remote as God and had the same unlimited powers.

  Mr. Hodgkins was shocked out of what Selina guessed was his usual calm manner by her news.

  “Miss Grierson! That charming woman! I can’t believe it! Are you sure it was suicide?”

  Selina explained about the cushion in the gas oven.

  “Verily’s headmistress thinks she must have been ill, she says perhaps her doctor will know—I’m to find out all I can before she tells Verily.”

  Mr. Hodgkins threw off his dismay and turned his thoughts to Tim.

  “Quite right. I wonder if the papers have got hold of it.”

  “Do the boys see the papers? Couldn’t you say she just died?”

  Mr. Hodgkins sounded fussed.

  “I don’t know—I shall talk it over with my nephew—please telephone me also if you find a reason, it may be a help.”

  Miss Osborne had not reckoned with the eyes and ears of Fleet Street. Even while Selina was speaking to her Bernard Task’s telephone was ringing. On the line was a journalist on his paper.

  “You know a Mr. and Mrs. Tom Blair, I hear. He’s a stockbroker.”

  Bernard was giving nothing away.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Mrs. Blair has done herself in.”

  Bernard was annoyed when he was disturbed at night for a reasonable cause, but to be wakened to deny foolish rumours was insufferable.

  “What lunatic told you that? If you must know I dined with the Blairs to-night, in fact I was there until about half-past eleven and I can promise you Mrs. B. was in cracking form.”

  The journalist broke in.

  “‘There is not a one of them but in his house I keep a servant fee’d.’ In this case my spy is in the police force.”

  It took a lot to silence Bernard, but that did. He knew the intricate spider’s web which a good newshawk spun in order that news should reach him. Then into his mind’s eye Helen swam, standing under the portico lights, laughing and waving the News of the World. His mouth went dry and he had to collect saliva before he could speak.

  “It’s the most ghastly shock. How is she supposed to have done it?”

  “Gas oven job.”

  “No! But why?”

  “That’s what I’ve rung you to find out. Was there anything wrong? Heard any funny rumours about her?”

  “Good Lord no.”

  Clearly that answer was a disappointment.

  “Oh! Was the marriage on the rocks?”

  “No, they got on better than most.”

  “Perhaps she had money troubles.”

  Bernard snapped at that.

  “Where do you hide yourself? He’s Stock Exchange and you know how things have been lately.”

  “Then she must have been ill. Cancer probably . . .”

  Bernard again saw Helen as he had last seen her.

  “I can’t believe it . . . you can’t imagine . . .”

  “Don’t be a Charlie. There’s got to be a reason. Good-looking rich women with doting husbands don’t put their heads in gas ovens after dinner for fun.”

  Bernard’s mind again snaked back through the evening. Could Helen have been acting? Was all that joie de vivre put on? He trusted himself as an observer and he did not believe it. He had been sitting next to her when they were working out the plans for cruelty week and he had seen her laugh until tears flopped down her cheeks. Could anyone laugh like that a couple of hours before they did what she was planning t
o do?

  “I’m beaten,” he said. “I’d swear on my Bible she hadn’t a thought of suicide up till half-past eleven, whatever made her do it happened after we were gone.”

  There was a fraction’s pause.

  “On the telephone? Could be. Was the husband out?”

  “He was. He drove a woman called Selina Grierson home.”

  “Who’s she? Any thing there?”

  “No good barking up that tree. Her people brought Tom Blair up. She’s a hayseed from Ireland, comes over for a month or two each year.”

  “Well, presumably he stayed with the hayseed or with somebody long enough for Mrs. B. to be past resuscitating by the time he got home.”

  “If he’d been with Selina all night Helen Blair wouldn’t have cared—they were probably talking about the kids—there are two, they stay with her in Ireland each summer.”

  “Kids!” The journalist brightened. “Where were they when it happened?”

  “At school and don’t ask me where because I don’t know, and anyway I wouldn’t tell you . . .”

  The journalist gave a snorting laugh.

  “Don’t get self-righteous, you’ll use the children yourself if you get a line on them. Now what about the other guests? Who was there?”

  Bernard gave him the list.

  “Know where the Worns are staying? They’d hardly go back to the castle at that time of night.”

  “I believe they always stay at The Conn aught, but they won’t know anything and wouldn’t tell you if they did. But if you must contact somebody I’d try Olivia Browne.”

  The journalist mentally ran over what he knew about Olivia.

  “Was Olivia Almonte?”

  “That’s her, and before that Olivia Moulin and further back still Lady Adam. She was born Schraff, her first husband was a Scot, McMuller, the porridge king.”

  “Got her number?” Bernard had. “Thanks. I’ll get on to her right away.”

  “Well, be careful,” said Bernard. “She won’t have heard and I swear it’s going to be a terrific shock to all of us who dined with the Blairs to-night.”

  After Tim’s school Selina rang George Worn. It was a one-sided conversation, punctuated with whispered “My dears!” for Miriam was asleep.