The Silent Speaker

by Noel Streatfeild

  George straightened his shoulders as if an actual load had fallen off his back.

  “Clever girl! I knew you would think of something. So it could. I wonder which would be best, for one of us to go and see Selina first or shall I have a talk with Tom?”

  Miriam got up.

  “I’m going to see Verily anyway. I want to be sure she isn’t sent back to school unless she . . .” She broke off for Tom was standing in the doorway holding a letter. George was thankful to notice that he looked better. Tom was not surprised to see Miriam.

  “Good-morning, my dear. I have just had this note from Selina sent by taxi. She tells me you drove Verily to her hotel last night. It was good of you.”

  Miriam had not seen Tom since Helen’s death and though he might look better to George he looked pathetically ill, wretched and in need of help to her. She crossed the room and gave him a kiss.

  “Dear Tom. I haven’t written, I know you must be snowed under—but you know how I feel.”

  Tom patted her arm.

  “Thank you, I do.”

  Miriam went back to the table to collect her gloves and bag.

  “I was just telling George that before I go back to Wyster I want to see Verily. Does Selina say how she is this morning?”

  “She said she was asleep. I’ve telephoned Selina, she’s to send her here by taxi as soon as she wakes.”

  “Sending,” thought Miriam. “Does that mean he’s not seeing Selina?” There was an awkward pause during which she could feel Tom wishing she would go. Then George said meaningly:

  “You could call in at the hotel. You might catch Verily before she leaves.”

  Tom looked harassed.

  “I think returning to school would be the best thing for her, though I’ll be guided by what you think, but I would rather she was not around until after the funeral.”

  “That’s my exit line,” thought Miriam. “A pity, those two could do with my advice, but I’ll see what I can get out of Selina. I bet that was what George was getting at when he suggested I call at the hotel.”

  Left alone with George Tom passed him Selina’s note.

  Dear Tom,

  I had meant to telephone you this morning but when I woke I decided to send you this letter. Miriam brought Verily here last night because she was asking for me. Dear Tom, Verily knows nothing about us, but is blaming herself for her mother’s death, she had, of course, nothing to do with it, I think I have convinced her of this, but I believe you should have a talk with her. Oh Tom, how I thank God it had nothing to do with us. Telephone me when you have read this to let me know if you would like me to bring Verily. I long to see you.

  Selina

  George passed the letter back.

  “Won’t you see Selina?”

  Tom was shocked.

  “Good God no, I’d feel disloyal to Helen.”

  “You’ll have to at the funeral. She’s sure to be there.”

  “Will your bishop still take it, in spite of my saying Helen was in her right mind?”

  The burden rolled back again into position on George’s shoulders. He could not imagine how Selina had found out that Verily knew nothing about her father and herself, but evidently somehow she had, so surely that ought to be enough for Tom. If it wasn’t it was a shocking business for it meant he would still blame himself to the coroner and they no longer had the line Miriam had suggested of insisting that Verily must not be allowed to blame herself.

  “Surely now that Selina has learnt her idea that Verily read her letters was a mare’s nest you can put it out of your head that you had anything to do with what Helen did.”

  Tom, George noticed, sounded less positive than he had been last night.

  “I don’t think so. Helen must have had a reason, George, and what other is there? I admit I’m shaken for without hearing of a letter how did Helen find out? I am wondering now if after I had driven off with Selina somebody telephoned.”

  Being tough was foreign to George but now he felt he must be.

  “I’m sorry to say this, old man, but you must stop thinking of yourself and think of your children. Already your daughter is blaming herself for some probably childish reason. What has happened is hard enough on them both without whispers reaching them of an affair between their father and a woman both look upon as a much-loved aunt.”

  Tom turned to the door.

  “I must write some letters. It’s kind of people to sympathise but I wish they wouldn’t.” He hesitated. “It was so sordid—so unlike Helen. I feel to allow it to be said she was out of her mind is the final slur.”

  He opened the door and went to his study.

  * * *

  Olivia was having her breakfast—a piece of toast melba, a scrape of butter and a cup of black coffee—in bed. She was reading Bernard’s article. Anthony, whose trade paper carried book reviews, came in with a book under his arm.

  “I’ve finished reading this. I’ll write my review at the office.”

  Olivia pushed her breakfast table to one side and patted the bed.

  “Sit down a minute.” Anthony sat. “Did you read Bernard Task’s article.”

  “Yes. It was damn bad taste to write it.”

  Olivia screwed herself together looking, in spite of her rose-coloured bed-jacket, like a small monkey feeling the cold.

  “You send shudders down my spine when you talk like that.”

  Anthony looked mulish.

  “Well, it is in bad taste.”

  “If it is it’s the sort of thing I’ve dined out on since I left school.”

  Olivia’s charms outweighed Bernard’s bad taste. Anthony took hold of her hands.

  “What about the article anyway?”

  “It’s made me think. There’s the inquest on Friday and what are we doing to help?”

  Anthony loathed taking an opposite view to Olivia but he did not shirk what he conceived to be a duty.

  “There is nothing we can or should do. The less we all say the less there will be for the Press to pick up and the sooner the wretched business will be forgotten.”

  Olivia tugged her hand away.

  “You can be a bore. You make life so dull. Naturally people are interested in why Helen did it and a good thing too, it’s much healthier than brooding on rockets or on how many American spies they are finding in Russia.”

  “But it’s nobody’s business except Tom’s why Helen did it.”

  Olivia snuggled against her bed rest.

  “What about the coroner? Imagine just how frustrating it must be for him to spend hours asking questions and finding out nothing. It would send me round the bend.”

  “But you must agree curiosity about a thing like this is bad taste.”

  “No, I don’t. I think it’s just plain healthy. Now run along, darling, I’m going to have a bath.”

  Anthony got up.

  “Just this once do as I ask. Keep out of this business. Tom Blair’s a nice fellow and has enough on his plate without his friends making things worse.”

  Olivia held out her arms.

  “Darling Tony, kiss me, you’re the only husband I’ve had who has made me feel aristocratic.”

  When Anthony had gone Olivia rang up Bernard.

  “I do like your article on Helen.”

  Bernard, who had dreaded picking up the receiver in case it was George or, worse still, Tom, was delighted.

  “Oh, did you . . . oh, my dear, I am glad. I didn’t want to write it, of course, I mean I’m sure Tom will hate it, but my editor insisted, and perhaps with all this talk I’ve done something towards making the public see Helen as she really was.”

  Olivia, thoroughly enjoying herself, settled herself comfortably for a gossip.

  “I was interested in what you said about there being a lonely suffering Hel
en under her gay exterior. Could be you’ve got something there. I had a talk with the Blairs’ Mrs. Simpson.”

  Bernard was enthralled.

  “My dear! That old dragon, how courageous, I wouldn’t have dared, I’m not a brave boy, I’m afraid.”

  “I took some flowers and while I was arranging them—and talking to Mrs. Simpson is like talking to a refrigerator—she let out something I thought interesting.”

  “My dear, what?”

  “Only on Monday morning Helen told Mrs. Simpson to order more wire for fixing flowers because chrysanthemums were heavy and it would be chrysanthemums until Christmas. We all know Helen was her usual self at dinner but until Mrs. Simpson said that I thought maybe she was putting on an act and had everything planned. Now your article has had me puzzled again. If she was as lonely, suffering and restless as you say and planning to lie down in the gas stove, why was she ordering wire to arrange chrysanthemums?”

  Bernard had been feeling inadequate. Having called his article “My Friend Helen Blair” everyone he knew expected him, if he did not know Helen’s motive, at least to have some inside information. Yet all he knew—and that he had learnt from Tom’s chilly-sounding solicitor Mr. Andrews who, when imparting the information had hoped there would be as little publicity as possible—was that the funeral was probably on Thursday and the inquest definitely on Friday. Although he had put his journalist friend on to Olivia he had forgotten what an admirable little prying nose she had.

  “Darling, all this is much too interesting to talk about on the telephone. Come and lunch with me. How about The Caprice at 12.45?”

  * * *

  Miriam had, the hall porter told her, missed Verily but if she wanted Miss Grierson she would find her in the little writing-room.

  Though still thankful beyond thinking that she and Tom had not been responsible for Helen’s death, Selina had been chilled as by an east wind by Tom’s voice on the telephone. There had never, since she was seven, been a moment when Tom had not felt part of her. Even the shattering letter which had told her he was marrying Helen had not entirely severed him from her, for though it was chilly comfort it was the letter of a brother to a sister. Selina was not fundamentally a jealous woman so, though it had taken much self-discipline, she had eventually tamed herself to accept that if you loved a man, to be treated as a much-loved sister was better than no place in his heart at all. Then she discovered that to tame yourself mentally is one thing, but to resist temptation when you have every opportunity and every pulse in your body is screaming “Let yourself go” is quite another. Tom’s visits when her mother died had been like their childhood all over again, periods of ecstasy they had not the will to resist, but which left shame like a slug’s slime trailing behind it. When finally Tom left her to return to London Selina had known they must never be alone again, for neither was strong enough to resist temptation, and so the cottage in Ireland.

  To accept a life against nature was, Selina determined, possible provided she was sure of Tom’s love. Without it Heaven knew to whom she might turn for physical comfort, so she had made Tom promise to write and to allow her to write to him. It was dangerous, they accepted that, for Helen was possessive, but poor comfort though there was in letters it was something. Tom, anything but physically starved, could burn hers to him, but she fed on his, underlining and re-reading those fragments that told her he still loved her.

  It was not until she believed she had subdued herself physically that Selina had allowed herself her annual three months in London. At first it had seemed a mistake for when, at Helen’s suggestion, Tom, after her dinners, had driven Selina to her hotel, they had slipped, without protest from Helen, into his coming in for a drink and a talk which, from a few minutes, began to last an hour, sometimes longer. This could have been her downfall; it would have been so easy in her quiet hotel to take him up to her room, but though both were conscious of the stairs, which were out of the eye-sight of the night porter, neither had mentioned them, and by degrees Selina had accepted that the danger had passed and they never would, so she survived on the expression that his face wore when he was alone with her. Never when they were alone had they ever, except casually, talked of Helen, she was the wife to whom he gave everything he had to give. That there was something he could not give was their secret. Now the dead Helen had, it seemed, taken the whole of Tom’s heart with her. Selina had been like a love-sick girl that morning, watching the clock waiting for Tom to telephone. Her first words, or at least the warmth behind them, had been a mistake. “Tom dear, have you had my letter?” His reply had not prepared her. “Yes, I’ve just received it.” “What about it? Shall I bring Verily round?” She had crumpled at his answer. “For God’s sake, Selina, no. Let’s have some respect for poor Helen. Put Verily in a taxi.” Then he had rung off. Shame and misery walked hand in hand in Selina’s mind. Only she knew that she had woken to the heart-lifting thought “He’s free now.” It was bitter to accept that Helen dead could hold Tom as Helen alive had never done.

  Miriam’s expressive face could disguise nothing, so that she was shocked at Selina’s appearance was written on it, but it was a passing expression, her mind was given to Verily.

  “Good-morning. I hear I’ve missed Verily. How are you?”

  Selina had seen the look on Miriam’s face and had disliked it, she was unused to being an object of pity. She followed her custom and came at once to what was important.

  “Are you driving Verily back to her school?”

  Miriam began to smoulder. It was outrageous the way that child was being pushed around.

  “Is she to go back to school? That’s what we’ve got to discuss.”

  Just as Verily’s arrival last night had helped Selina, so now discussion of her was having the same effect.

  “She’s expecting to go, I think—anyway, where else?”

  Miriam looked and felt indignant.

  “Aren’t you taking her return to school for granted? She might prefer to be with her father, or to stay with you, or she can come to Wyster.”

  Selina had that morning heard Verily on Miriam.

  “I had a fit, Selina, when Lady Worn walked in. I only knew her that awful week-end Tim and I spent at Wyster, and then we hardly saw her, we went around with the twins and that horrible stuck-up Harry.”

  “I believe she’ll be glad to be back at school. She’s got her friend Ruth, and I think she likes her headmistress, and I know she is fond of her housemistress.”

  Miriam, from serving on innumerable committees which looked after under-dogs, was quick to see flaws in what she considered glib statements.

  “Then why did she run away to try and reach you?”

  “She blames herself for her mother’s death.”

  “So I heard. Everybody seems to be blaming themselves.”

  Selina blushed. A slow agonising flood of colour of which she was ashamed.

  “Did Tom tell you?”

  Poor beast, Miriam thought. Such an unlikely centrepiece for a cause célèbre.

  “No, George. I gather you haven’t talked to Tom?” Selina shook her head. “George asked my advice. You see Tom wants to tell the coroner. It’s to prove Helen was sane when she did it.”

  “About us?”

  “That was Tom’s idea but I think I’ve shown George a way out. However shocked Tom is, and of course it’s shock that’s making him so difficult, he can’t involve Verily, which he might have to do if he sticks to his story, as she is involved.”

  “Verily’s not involved.”

  “Not!”

  “No.”

  Miriam was getting tired of Helen. She had quite liked her when she was alive, but dead she was becoming a nuisance.

  “I understood Verily had read letters Tom had written to you and had passsed on what they said to her mother.”

  “I thought that, but it wasn’t tr
ue.”

  “Then what is it that Verily blames herself for? The child was hysterical when I found her.”

  Selina hesitated. Ought she to tell Miriam what Verily had told her? A moment later she realised she might as well. If Tom was proposing to tell the coroner about himself and had already told George and probably Edward it was not likely Verily’s secret would be kept.

  “Verily was jealous of her mother and she believed her mother was jealous of her. They had a scene just before Verily returned to school, during which Verily told her mother her father would be happier without her.”

  Miriam served on two committees whose object was to help girls in trouble, so to her Selina was repeating an old story.

  “Was that all? I daresay it’s true, women of Helen’s type are usually more mistress than mother; jealousy of a mother for a daughter and vice versa isn’t unusual.”

  Selina was glad she had not shown Miriam how unpleasant she had thought Verily’s story.

  “I tried to make Verily see that what happened on Monday couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened at the end of the holidays. If Helen had minded at the time she would have got over it.”

  Miriam tossed away Verily’s confession, her mind thinking further.

  “It would be better if she had read a letter, as you had supposed, for if this story of being jealous is what the child is telling her father it kills George’s line that Tom must keep quiet at the inquest because it will drag Verily in. I can’t understand Tom, shocked though he is, not seeing that he must keep quiet for the children’s sake. The affair is sordid enough without making it worse.”

  In face of the major tragedies involved Selina had not thought of how she would appear; now, at Miriam’s words, she inwardly shuddered. Tom would presumably only say that for years he had loved somebody else, but every friend they had would put two and two together. And what a laugh that would give them! The gossip would even drift across to Ireland. How could Tom, the Tom she knew, be so cruel and what possible good could he imagine his confession would do Helen?

  “He must be stopped!” So much of what Selina had been thinking was behind her words they came out almost as a cry.