The Silent Speaker

by Noel Streatfeild

  “There were simply thousands of lobsters in the sea near where Selina lives once, but now a man buys all that the locals can catch, they mostly go to France.”

  Miss Osborne longed to be able to encourage Verily to tell her more about Ireland, it was heart-breaking to have to drag the child back to the unhappy subject of her mother, but it had to be done, she could not allow the truth to be sprung on her by her brother.

  “Verily, I did not tell you the whole truth this morning. I told you that your mother had died as the result of an accident, and that is still true because it is an accident when we lose control of ourselves . . .” Miss Osborne hoped for an interruption, but none came. The child just gazed at her. In front of that daunting stare she knew the words she had just spoken to be inept. “What I am trying to tell you, dear, is that your mother killed herself.”

  In the silence Miss Osborne heard the aggressive tick of the black marble clock on the mantelpiece. A coal fell out of the fire. Somebody crossed the room overhead. In the distance a vacuum cleaner hummed.

  Queer, thought Miss Osborne, who was quite unable to look away from Verily’s eyes, it is not grief-stricken the child looks, but scared.

  At last Verily spoke. She seemed to drag her words out of her.

  “Does Daddy know why Mummy did that?”

  “No. I haven’t spoken to your father, only to Miss Grierson. She told me on the telephone this morning it’s a mystery, nobody knows why.”

  “Will they try and find out?”

  “There will have to be an inquest, that’s held by a man called a coroner, it will be his duty to try and find the reason.”

  “Why? I shouldn’t have thought it was anybody’s business except ours why Mummy did it. And if Daddy doesn’t want to know why—and I bet he doesn’t—why should some coroner nose around?”

  Miss Osborne was accustomed to thinking before she spoke but a horrid suspicion caused words to leap from her lips before she had a chance to decide if it were wise to say them.

  “Verily, you know the reason.”

  Verily looked furtive.

  “I don’t. Of course I don’t, and nobody can say that I do.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “If it were not enough poor Madam killing herself in my kitchen,” Mrs. Simpson had told Mrs. Wragge. “All these police about the place, poking about without so much as a do-you-mind, is something I’ve never been used to.”

  Mrs. Wragge, her arms deep in washing powder suds as she washed up the last night’s dinner plates which Field had left to soak, had been a quite admirable audience. Breathless and goggle-eyed she had received any information Mrs. Simpson deigned to drop.

  “Terrible shock it must have been. I feel quite rough myself. Did she seem strange, poor lady? Seemed ever so cheerful yesterday when she was arranging the flowers, I heard her singing.”

  “Believe me, the first I knew anything was wrong was when the ambulance arrived. The noise must have woken me. That’s Mr. Blair, I thought, must have forgotten his keys, for I knew he’d have driven Miss Grierson home. So I put on my slippers and dressing-gown, and then I saw the police—well, Mrs. Wragge, my stomach turned over. Then, when his Lordship told me what had happened, I screamed out ‘Never Madam!’ and dropped like a stone.”

  Mrs. Wragge had made sympathetic clucking sounds.

  “And I don’t wonder. What happened then?”

  “I don’t know. The next I knew I was in bed and Doctor giving me an injection.”

  “Do they know why she done it?”

  At that time Mrs. Simpson had known nothing, but she had not admitted it.

  “We’ll know soon enough. And you better get a move on. His Lordship and Mr. Cale were here to breakfast, and I got breakfast for Mr. Blair, but he only had a cup of coffee, poor gentleman, and there’s been glasses used and that. Better get all the washing-up done before you start on your hall.”

  Mrs. Simpson was not in the habit of running away, notice was given or taken, and a date for departure agreed, until that day, however unpleasant the position, you stayed and did your work. But for this principle, which she had inherited from her father who had been a valet, Mrs. Simpson would have packed her boxes and left the moment she woke, bleary-eyed, from her drug-induced sleep. But as the morning passed she forgot she had wished to pack, for she realised she was in the satisfactory position of being the much-needed woman in a house full of men. The solicitor, Mr. Andrews, had arrived, and then Doctor Arnold had called, and Lord Worn was still about and there were police around, and everybody needed something, if it was only a cup of tea. But one woman could only do so much, so well before mid-day Mrs. Simpson had taken the law into her hands and telephoned for help.

  “Have you heard what’s happened here, Mr. Field?”

  Mr. Field indicated with a muttered “shocking news” that he had.

  “I can’t be in two places at once, and Miss Grierson hasn’t come though no doubt she’s coming, so there’s been no shopping done, if you can manage it I should be glad if you could come round right away.”

  Field was a widower. He lived alone in a basement flat, which he was given rent free in return for caretaking when the family were away. The family were not away now, but even had they been he would have felt it his duty to help out at the Blairs. He had a small circle of people for whom he buttled on occasion, and all were, as he frequently explained to Mrs. Simpson, hand-picked. The owners of the house in which he lived, a stockbroker and his wife, he scarcely saw, and when he did they were not, as he told Mrs. Simpson, his type. He was their honest caretaker when they were away, nothing more. But his own people meant a great deal to Field. His only living child, a son, worked in Australia, and he had no close relatives and few friends, for his work took him out when others were free, so his great interest was the world of the families for whom he buttled. For the Blairs’ home he had a special affection, for in a strictly platonic way he was devoted to Mrs. Simpson. They had much in common for they came from the same background, parents on both sides having been in service, so they had shared a childhood on the fringe of high society in the days when there was a servants’ hall and all the snobbery that went with it. Neither saw the past as snobbish, rather as a period both had been privileged to know, which had given them their knowledge of what was what and who was who. So, though it meant arranging for someone else to wait at a luncheon for another of his families, Field at once answered Mrs. Simpson’s call for help.

  Laying the table for luncheon Field looked with moist eyes and a lump in his throat at the chair on which Helen had sat last night. In his mind’s eye he could see the Blairs and their guests as he had seen them the night before. It was an oval table, Mr. Blair at the one end and Mrs. Blair at the other. Still in place was Mrs. Blair’s nice arrangement of roses, flat so it didn’t stop people seeing each other. On Mr. Blair’s right was Lady Worn and on his left Mrs. Cale. Field always took special care of Mrs. Cale for she had lost her little girl, just as he and Mrs. Field had lost theirs, so he knew what a knock it was. Next to Mrs. Cale was Mr. Browne, not quite a gentleman though pleasant, a funny husband for Mrs. Almonte, as mentally he still called Olivia. Next to him was Miss Grierson; Field had a particularly soft corner for Selina, a proper lady he thought she was, and next to her Lord Worn, he was glad his Lordship was staying, very right and proper, real friend he was. He looked again unhappily at Helen’s chair; on her other side was Mr. Cale, then next to him Mrs. Almonte, now Browne, and next to her that Mr. Task. A moment during the dinner floated back into Field’s mind. He was serving the steak Diane, which kept him busy to get it piping hot on to every plate, and while he was serving, Mr. Cale was telling Lady Worn about some case, he remembered it clearly because they were all leaning forward and listening and had to be given a slight touch before they helped themselves to their portions. Field looked again at where Helen had sat. Had Mrs. Blair been listening too? He w
as sure she had, why yes, of course it was coming back now, he remembered she was one who hadn’t noticed the steak until he whispered “madam.” Field stood away from the table and shook his head at Helen’s chair. “I don’t know why you did it, madam,” he thought, “but you didn’t ought to have done. Whatever the reason it wasn’t a nice thing to do, not the sort of thing we expect in a house like this.”

  Mrs. Simpson had been surprised there had been so few callers; flowers came, of course, and a lot of letters were delivered by hand, but only one visitor had tried to see Mr. Blair, and it had given Mrs. Simpson pleasure to tell her nobody could see him, though she had been willing herself to see the visitor.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Browne, I have his Lordship’s orders, Mr. Blair will see nobody except Mr. Andrews, his solicitor, and of course the doctor.”

  Olivia had not put on a special pale make-up and her Dior coat and skirt to get no further than the front door, so she had moved forward, placing as she did so a load of roses in Mrs. Simpson’s arms.

  “You must be snowed under with work. I’ll arrange these for you—I do think flowers are so cheering—you poor thing, you look all in. What a shock for you, of course I was told almost as soon as it happened and I felt just terrible. That lovely woman!”

  Mrs. Simpson had led Olivia into the little room where the vases lived. It had been so entirely Helen’s room, for she had loved arranging flowers, that it upset Mrs. Simpson so much that she surprised herself by saying so.

  “Oh dear! I haven’t been in here. Ever so queer it makes me feel—you know, Madam having gone in a manner of speaking.”

  Olivia opened the sliding doors of one of the cupboards and chose a vase.

  “Did she do the flowers for last night’s dinner?”

  On an ordinary day Mrs. Simpson would have thought such a question an impertinence, but the shock had made her talkative.

  “Madam always did the flowers. Mrs. Wragge, our woman, says yesterday she sang while she did them.”

  “Must have been to keep her spirits up, I guess,”

  Mrs. Simpson filled a jug with water from the sink tap. Olivia’s remark should be treated with the silence it deserved but she should not leave believing there was careless housekeeping, and in a minute she would come across a shortage.

  “Let me fill that for you, madam, the flower scissors are in that drawer—the wire should be in the bottom cupboard, but there’s not much of it. Madam told me only yesterday I was to order some more, for chrysanths, she said, were so heavy they needed a lot of fixing with wire, and it would be chrysanths from now until Christmas.”

  Olivia picked up the flower scissors, and clipped some wire to grip the roses. Queer Helen ordering wire if she knew she was never going to use it. It looked as if whoever it was that bad made her decide to pack it up had done the job in a hurry.

  “You must have had a terrible night, I suppose the telephone rang the whole time, and of course the front door.”

  Mrs. Simpson recounted again her dramatic fall into George’s arms.

  “And then Doctor injected something. I never heard anything after that.”

  “Didn’t we disturb you when we left?”

  “I never hear anything that side, madam, you see, my room’s at the back.”

  “But you heard the bell when the ambulance came, so I suppose you hear the telephone if it rings.”

  Mrs. Simpson felt Olivia was prying.

  “Not the telephone, unless the family are away. It’s switched through then on account of my being alone in the house. I don’t mind for myself but Mr. Blair is particular that way.”

  Olivia had to accept that if some dramatic call had reached Helen she was not going to hear about it from Mrs. Simpson. Tiresome, she could not go on arranging the roses for ever and she hated to go home no wiser than when she came out. She was due at a women’s luncheon and of course everyone would expect her to know something seeing she had been one of the last to see Helen alive.

  She fixed a rose in place and stood back to study the effect.

  “It’s the strangest business, Mrs. Simpson. Why, right up to the time we left last night Mrs. Blair was in the best spirits, but I suppose it could have been put on, maybe you who saw so much of her had known she had something on her mind.”

  Mrs. Simpson stiffened from the bottom of her spine to the top of her head, a stiffening Helen had known only too well.

  “If you will excuse me, madam, I have a lot to do. Mrs. Blair was one who kept herself to herself, as I do myself. We liked it that way.” She walked out of the flower room.

  Olivia made a face at her back.

  “Sour old cat,” she thought, “no matter how good a housekeeper she is I wouldn’t have her as a gift.”

  In a small hotel within walking distance of the Blairs’ house George and Miriam were drinking coffee. George had a page of notes for Miriam.

  “The solicitor says Tom has no family burial ground so Helen had better be buried at Wyster.”

  Miriam stirred her coffee.

  “Can you bury suicides in consecrated ground?”

  “I think it will be all right, I’ll see the bishop, it’s a different committal service, I believe.”

  Miriam wanted to help and therefore had to try to understand.

  “I suppose I’m being dense but would Helen have cared where she was buried? I mean, she didn’t go to church, did she? I should have thought she would have settled for cremation, you know, tidy and no fuss.”

  George’s face was grey-green from lack of sleep.

  “It isn’t true she never went to church, but I admit it was seldom. My suggestion of Wyster for the funeral is for Tom’s sake, it’s something I can arrange without much trouble, and it’s out of the way so it won’t attract a morbid crowd. The solicitor, Andrews of Andrews, Dunlop and Lacey, says she has not stated in her Will what type of funeral she wanted, and that this is a good thing as, under the circumstances, cremation might have been difficult to arrange. He advises that permission for burial is applied for at once, he said he saw no reason why it would not be granted.”

  “Won’t there be a coroner’s court?”

  “Of course, but apparently the funeral need not be held up for that.”

  Miriam thought pityingly of Tom.

  “It’s so ghoulish. Whose business is it but poor Tom’s why she did it, and of course he doesn’t care. I suppose those of us who were at dinner will have to attend—how he’ll hate it.”

  George looked at his watch.

  “I’ll have to go, there’s so much to see to for Tom’s in no condition to do anything, of course. As a matter of fact, if the coroner can find a reason it may do a bit of good, for at the moment Tom’s blaming himself.”

  Miriam gasped at that.

  “What! Why on earth should he?”

  “Because he wasn’t there, he says if he hadn’t been out it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “But if Helen meant to do it she would have done it sometime.”

  “I agree, but he’s too shocked at the moment to see that.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In a mortuary. I’m off to see the police to find out when they’ll let an undertaker fetch the body. Then I’m going to see the bishop about the funeral and prayers for the repose of her soul. I want you to go to Wyster, darling, I’ll telephone you there when the time of the funeral is fixed. I shall try and bring Tom down and perhaps persuade him to stay a couple of nights.”

  “What about Verily and Tim, should I go and see them?”

  “Selina’s dealt with all that, she says the schools are coping. If anyone goes she will, that is until Tom is more himself.”

  Miriam thought of their Harry at Eton and Caroline and Henrietta at their boarding school. Suppose she or George had done what Helen had done, would the children like their
schools to cope, or would they expect the remaining parent to come down? Dismayed, she discovered she did not know the answer. Harry at sixteen was amusing, affectionate and charming, but aloof. Caroline and Henrietta, perhaps because they were twins, seemed dependent only on each other.

  “It’s such an awkward age, the teens, you never know what they are thinking inside, I don’t suppose Verily and Tim confided in Helen either.”

  George was used to Miriam answering her thoughts out loud, and he had other things to do than discuss his or Tom’s children. He got up.

  “Be prepared to put up the bishop. I shall ask him to take the funeral, I think he might help Tom, I can’t get near him myself.”

  Miriam heard the anguish in the last statement. She laid a hand on George’s and gave it a squeeze.

  “You will—give him time.”

  George looked down at her hand.

  “I hope you’re right, darling, but I doubt it, he seems deliberately shutting himself away—if I did not know him so well I should feel he was guarding his tongue; of course he isn’t, it’s just shock, but that’s the feeling I get, and it’s painful from so old a friend.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Mrs. Simpson and Field faced each other across the kitchen table. Mrs. Simpson had the teapot in front of her, in front of Field was a dish of sliced cold lamb.

  “How many slices, Mrs. Simpson?” Field asked.

  Mrs. Simpson poured milk into the cups.

  “Just the one to start with. I haven’t felt able to eat much since last night.”

  Field laid two slices of lamb on a plate.

  “But you must keep your strength up, there’ll be busy days ahead, not to mention we’ll both be wanted at the inquest.”

  Mrs. Simpson passed Field his cup of tea.

  “I hope they don’t want Mrs. Wragge, what does she know anyway? Her sort gets so easily unsettled, and as I said to Mr. Andrews, there’s more than enough to be done here without Mrs. Wragge spending her morning in the coroner’s court.”