The Silent Speaker

by Noel Streatfeild

  “I have Verily in the hall, she wants to see you. I am bringing her up.”

  Selina gasped as if cold water had been thrown over her. So she had not let her imagination run away with her. Verily must have shown her mother one of Tom’s letters. Then, as if actual water had hit her, she gave herself a shake and for the first time since she had heard Helen was dead pulled herself together. In the second it took her to take in what Miriam had said, and to accept from where she was speaking, the Selina Mrs. Simpson and Field had watched blundering out into the night was gone, and mentally the Selina Verily knew, uncomplicated, understanding and affectionate, was back. But Selina, never face conscious, forgot what crying off and on for rising twenty hours did to your appearance. Verily, rushing in to clutch Selina, did not notice her face and would not have cared if she had, but Miriam was amazed. “What’s she in such a state for?” she puzzled. “I never supposed she and Helen did more than get on.” Out loud she said:

  “I see you’ve got a second bed so you can cope with Verily. I’ll ring in the morning.”

  * * *

  Edward had persuaded Tom that he should tell George exactly what he had told him. George was an old and valued friend, he was discreet and he would bring a different angle of thought to Tom’s story. Edward knew enough of the way George’s mind worked to accept that he would not consider Tom guiltless because he had never since Selina left for Ireland actually committed adultery; evil-thinking to him was also sin. But he gave George credit for enough commonsense to see as clearly as he had it was neither Tom nor Selina who had caused Helen to put her head in a gas oven. After all, George too had seen Helen last night and must know she had no thought of suicide when they were there. It was a wild-cat idea that Helen had been waiting for an opportunity to finish herself off. Wearily, for concentrating on Tom had been exhausting, Edward drove himself home, and with his latchkey let himself into his flat.

  For Celia it had been a disturbing day. Churned up inside was how she described herself, but that was an understatement. By dying in the way she had Helen had given her such a jolt that she had been examining herself ever since, and even though self-examination in her case was cushioned from view by excuses, she had not liked what she saw. Since Prunella’s death she had accepted, and so she thought had everybody else, that she had been called upon to bear a greater load of suffering than most women could carry. She had been ill after Prunella had died with a nervous breakdown, and when she had crawled out into the world again Edward and all their relations and friends had not again mentioned the child’s name. Celia had never admitted even to herself she had not wanted another child, that she did not like to think of another baby in Prunella’s place and, who knew, perhaps the tragedy to be gone through again. But Edward wanted a family so when none arrived normally she had made every effort, visiting gynaecologist after gynaecologist, punctiliously doing what she was told. There had not been an exact time when Edward and she had agreed that there was not to be another, it had just crept up on them, so they had stopped visiting doctors and thinking in terms of a home big enough to have a nursery, and settled for childlessness. As even to herself Celia had not admitted it was Edward not she who wanted a family it was accepted amongst her relations and friends that hers was a double tragedy, and she supposed everyone thought it wonderful that she had not let life get her down. She had thought she was pretty wonderful herself, in fact it was one of those accepted things that she was, so it had torn her wide open to learn that Helen, whom she had always looked upon as one on whom the Gods had showered nothing but blessings, should have had some tragedy in her life that suddenly became so unbearable that she had killed herself. What it was that had crushed Helen was beyond her imagining, but that this agony, whatever it was, existed, suddenly made the tragic figure of herself, smiling with a broken heart, which was how she had supposed she appeared, ridiculous. Never, even in the first flood of grief over Prunella had she thought of suicide, and now, facing Helen’s end, she had to accept, and it was a big surprise, that she had long ago ceased to suffer. Poor little Prunella, because she was never talked about and seldom in her thoughts, had faded to vanishing point. Whatever can Helen have thought of me, she wondered? We never talked about Prunella but of course she must have known I thought I was making the best I could of things after my life was smashed up, and all the time—at least I suppose it had been going on some time—she had something so awful hanging over her that she could do this.

  Her fingers over her eyes Celia tried to see Helen, not as she had appeared last night, but when they met normally. They had never been intimate since their school days, but they had done things together: gone on shopping expeditions, helped at each other’s stalls at charity bazaars, occasionally they went to a matinée and had lunch first. Had Helen ever given a hint that she too might have something to endure, that Celia was not the only pebble on the beach, as her nurse used to say? Now Celia came to think of it her nurse had been fond of saying that to her. Even as a small thing had she been inclined to think that she was the only one to suffer set-backs, illnesses and disappointments? It is tough to wait until you are over forty to view yourself in a new and more searching light. A wallower, that’s what I’ve been, Celia decided. I shouldn’t wonder if behind my back everyone has been calling me Mona. Of course I’ve had plenty to make me wallow, but what on earth had Helen got? And I was jealous of her, I whose bad time is behind me. Of course I’ve always known Helen was brave, but fancy keeping whatever it was to herself, I couldn’t have done that, I’d have had to tell somebody. It was silly of her, it’s true about troubles shared and anyway what are friends for if not to help.

  When Edward came home Celia, cleansed after her self-probing, wanted to fling her arms round him and tell him part at least of what she had been thinking, but one look at his tired face and she knew this was not the moment. Instead she followed him into the living-room and sat on the arm of his chair.

  “Have you had an awful time? Would you like anything?”

  Edward stretched himself.

  “Mrs. Simpson didn’t do a bad dinner, but I wouldn’t mind some sandwiches. I’ve had the Hell of an evening.”

  Celia was gone about five minutes, when she came back with the sandwiches Edward grinned at her.

  “Field waited on us and, do you know, I nearly made the old joke about keeping him from Mrs. Simpson.”

  Celia put an occasional table beside Edward’s chair and the sandwiches on it.

  “How’s Tom?”

  Edward took a sandwich and ate it before he answered.

  “Exasperating. He’s got a bit of nonsense in his head, he thinks he knows why Helen put her head in that gas oven, he insists she did it on purpose; if he sticks to that line it could mean a verdict of felo de se.”

  “Would that matter awfully?”

  “I’ll say it would! The Press will go to town on it, and George is going up the wall. He’s fixed up the funeral, it’s to be at Wyster on Thursday, and he’s got his tame bishop to take the service. I doubt that will happen if Tom insists Helen killed herself deliberately knowing what she was doing.”

  “Drink?” Celia asked.

  “A very small whisky, I’ve been drinking brandy most of the evening. Why don’t you have one yourself? I want to pick your brains.”

  Celia poured out the drinks, gave Edward his and sat down in the chair facing him.

  “About Helen, I suppose?”

  “Yes. I can’t tell you the bit of nonsense Tom’s got into his head for he told me in confidence, but it means he blames himself for Helen’s death. That’s got to be put a stop to, and the only way to do it is to find the real reason.”

  “If, by picking my brains, you mean do I know the reason, I don’t. I’ve had Olivia on the phone, she thinks it’s some man let her down.”

  Edward flicked aside Olivia’s views.

  “You’d known her since she was a c
hild. Looking back did it strike you lately she’d got something on her mind?”

  Celia would have liked to tell Edward her discoveries about herself but, especially when he was tired, Edward was easily aggravated by what appeared to him irrelevancies.

  “Never, isn’t it odd? I mean, I knew her pretty well, and of course she knew about . . .” Even with her newfound knowledge of herself it was hard to speak the name “Prunella.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Edward’s startled glance. “I mean, if something had gone ghastly wrong, which obviously it must have, I should have thought I would have known. I mean, when you’ve taken knocks yourself I should have thought you would recognize when somebody else was going through it.”

  Edward thought that over.

  “If she was going through it she was a damned good actress, I’d swear there wasn’t a sign of it last night. What was she like at school? Was she always the type who could disguise how she felt?”

  Celia and Helen had often laughed together over school memories, so they were reasonably fresh in Celia’s mind. She could see Eastbourne, and the crocodile of girls walking along the sea front dressed in grey in the winter and blue in the summer. On so many of those dreary walks she had paired with Helen. It was during walks that they had learned each other’s backgrounds: Celia herself was one of four, her father was a successful surgeon, they lived in Weybridge. Helen, because she had no regular home, had found every detail of Celia’s life interesting. Helen’s parents were divorced and where she was to spend the holidays was a toss up until the last minute. She had not apparently felt deprived in any way, she would talk quite freely of both her father and mother, and her step-mother and step-father, apparently regarding their goings-on with amused tolerance. “I expect there are some furious phone calls as to which of them has got to have me for the summer hols.” She and Helen had for a time shared a bedroom with a third girl and there the usual schoolgirl nonsense had been talked and confidences exchanged. Helen in those days had been a natural for receiving confidences. She was reliable, she kept secrets but, more important, she listened with vivid interest and exuded a kind of warmth. She had also remarkable serenity for a schoolgirl, which made those confiding in her feel she had time to listen.

  “She wasn’t the sort of girl who wanted to hide anything. She was very open, if you know what I mean.”

  “Open!” Edward’s head shot up. She had changed then. “She was not a woman I should describe as open.”

  Celia was struggling to see the schoolgirl Helen more clearly.

  “Everybody thought her marvellous at school, she did everything so well, she was just exactly what our headmistress, Miss Foster, wanted us all to be, that’s why she made her a prefect much younger than prefects usually were, and she finished up head girl.”

  Edward was interested.

  “Curious. I could imagine Helen the object of schwārmerei, but I should have pictured her a rebel, breaking every school rule, smiling angelically while she did it.”

  “Yes, I can see that she might seem like that when you knew her, actually at school she was exactly the opposite. You know I’ve often told you how churchy and high-toned my school was. Miss Foster’s great thing was courage, we had endless pep talks about it.”

  “Moral or physical?”

  “Both. We were never to be afraid of anything. Miss Foster believed lack of courage was at the back of most of the rows and fusses in the world. We used to laugh and make fun of old Foster’s talks, but Helen didn’t, I think she believed in bravery even more than Miss Foster did.”

  Edward considered Helen in this light, then he nodded.

  “I can imagine that. She had a kind of gallantry about her. I can see her refusing to be afraid.”

  “Of course at school it was mostly moral courage we were supposed to show, I wasn’t any good at it, you know, speaking out when you thought something was wrong. Helen was always at it.”

  “I should have thought that would make her loathed, it would in a boys’ school.”

  “It didn’t, I suppose it was the way she did it. I think we all saw her as a sort of Joan of Arc, we could imagine her burning at the stake without a murmur.”

  “She ought to have become one of our special service girls during the war. Did she?”

  “I bet she would have if her languages had been good enough. Actually she drove an ambulance to begin with and then she worked in a factory.”

  “I wonder why she gave up driving her ambulance. Can’t see her in a factory.”

  “The first heavy blitzes were over, I think. I suppose she thought she’d be more useful there.”

  Edward, accustomed to looking for what did not follow a pattern, could not accept that.

  “It’s odd. It doesn’t fit in with the schoolgirl you’ve described. I can understand the ambulance driver, stormed at by shot and shell, front line stuff, that’s in keeping, but when a lull came I should have thought she’d have joined one of the women’s services, with all that leadership history she should have made a good officer.”

  Celia could not see that what Helen did in the war mattered.

  “I suppose she would have. I didn’t see her until after the war and then we’d better things to talk about than swap war experiences, women don’t much, you know, we leave that to you.”

  “Didn’t you see her at all during the war years?”

  “No, but I heard about her. You know I send a card at Christmas to somebody called Barbara Bell.”

  “A parson’s wife.”

  “That’s right. Well, she was Barbara Horn then, she worked in the same department in the War Office as I did, and she lived in the same block as Helen so she gave me news of her—it was she who told me Helen had left London and gone to work in a factory.”

  Edward was devoted to Celia, but he had no illusions about her. She was a silly little chit, only too likely to put her foot where it was least wanted. If she had a hint that he might be interested in Barbara Bell she would be compelled to write to Barbara to-morrow morning. So in his memory he stored “Barbara Bell on the Christmas card list” and turned to Helen’s post-war history.

  “When did you meet up again?”

  “When she saw in The Times I was marrying you she wrote of course, and told me at the same time she was marrying Tom and couldn’t we meet.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, we had lunch in Harrods, we were both buying our trousseaux.”

  “Had the war changed her much?”

  “I don’t know about the war. Tom had. I was pretty silly about you at that time but she was goo-ey about Tom.”

  “Did she tell you about the factory?”

  “I don’t know why people say you’re clever. Can you imagine two girls who are about to be married talking about factories? You had to have coupons to buy clothes then, I don’t remember but I expect we talked about the best way of using the ones we had collected, which reminds me, I didn’t send flowers to-day, I thought we’d send some when she’s moved to wherever the undertakers put her.”

  “George is making all the arrangements. She’s being moved either to-night or to-morrow morning. But to go back to Harrods—who, by the way, are the undertakers—I want you to focus on Helen as she was that day. Apart from Tom’s effect on her would you say she had changed?”

  Celia looked plaintive.

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is you want to know? Of course she was changed, we all were, you don’t go through six years of war unchanged.”

  Edward got up and refilled his and Celia’s glasses.

  “Of course Olivia could be right and Helen was having a love affair which came to an end last night, but I don’t see her finishing herself off for that. I think it’s more likely it was a child.”

  “A child! There’s nothing wrong with Verily or Tim.”

  Edward handed Celia her glass
and tried not to sound impatient.

  “Not them, a wartime child that we know nothing about.”

  “Goodness! Why do you think that?”

  Edward was following his own thoughts.

  “A child born in ’42 would be around 19 to-day. It would be enough to make anyone put their head in a gas oven to have given birth to that young thug I was baiting Miriam with last night.”

  “But you said he had a mother.”

  Edward made a face at her.

  “Brighten up, sweet, not him, someone like him, or it could be a girl.”

  “But if it was something like that why mind particularly last night?”

  Edward was, he hoped, keeping the News of the World to himself.

  “Why indeed? The whole business is one long why. But there’s got to be a reason. Did anyone else phone to-day?”

  “You bet, especially this afternoon as it was front page news in the evening papers. Bernard Task asked if I’d heard anything.”

  “Don’t tell him a word.”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t know anything to tell. He wanted to know where she was being buried and when.”

  “I suppose George will have to tell him, but he won’t like the Press knowing. It’s at Wyster on Thursday as things are.” He paused there for it had been understood since Prunella’s death that attending funerals depressed Celia so she never went to one. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come—I mean for Tom’s sake we must all turn up.”

  Celia, to his surprise, accepted this without comment.

  “Right.” She got up. “I’m going to bed, I feel as if I’d been up for a million years. Are you coming?”

  Edward thought longingly of his bed. Was it really only last night that he was pulled out of it by Selina’s telephone call? But there was the News of the World, ought he not to look at that? Then his reason told him he was being a fool, his brain was too tired to be reliable. Besides, something might crop up at the inquest, he would leave further probing until that was behind him.