The Silent Speaker

by Noel Streatfeild

  “That passed off nicely, thank God. But now, if we’re to get old Tom out of the slough of despond we’ve got to get down to some research.”

  “Indeed yes,” George agreed. “Miriam says both children are depending on Selina, and as things are he won’t have her in the house.”

  Edward glanced round to see nobody was within earshot.

  “We got round that newspaper business damned easily.”

  George felt repugnance and showed it.

  “You prevaricated.”

  “Prevarication nothing. The coroner asked what became of the paper, and I said I took it up to read in bed. You saw me put it in my pocket, how do you know I didn’t read it in bed?”

  “You suggested that Helen had not read the paper.”

  “I had to. The coroner was asking a routine question, if I’d let him think Helen had read the paper and gone straight to the gas stove—which is merely supposition—I’d have started something which at the least would have caused a lot of chatter, and at the worst might have meant a further inquest.”

  George, having expressed his disapproval, let the matter drop. He liked Edward but their ethics were wide apart.

  “What’s the next step?”

  Edward took another look round before answering. But no one was near except Miriam, and she was talking to Mrs. Simpson and Field.

  “I shall go through the News of the World with a fine comb. I haven’t read it yet, as I did not want to touch it until I could give my whole mind to it. Then I’ve picked up a possible witness from Celia. She knows a parson’s wife who saw Helen during the war.”

  “The war! How can she help?”

  “If I’m right and the key lies in the News of the World we might have to look back to the war years. It’s a shot in the dark, but Helen might have had a child no one knew about.”

  “It looks hopeless but I suppose anything is worth a try.”

  “I’m trying something else. I hear the headmistress of the school Celia and Helen attended is still alive, she’s an old woman now but I gather a shrewd old bird; she may know some history of hysteria nobody else knows about.”

  George did not want to be discouraging but he could see no hope from that source either. Helen’s father was dead but her mother, now a widow living in Bermuda, had written a letter which had been read in court to say that Helen had been a normal child with admirable school reports. There was no insanity as far as she knew on either side of the family, that she had not seen her daughter since her marriage but her letters suggested she was exceedingly happy.

  “If you think it is worth trying.”

  Edward’s face suddenly looked grim.

  “Absolutely anything is. I’m not going to see an old friend believing a bit of nonsense about being responsible for his wife’s death when my commonsense tells me it is rubbish.”

  Mrs. Simpson thought it very kind of her Ladyship to come and talk to herself and Field but she wanted nothing but to get home. Since her childhood excitement, as she put it, “flew to her bladder,” so she was now suffering acutely and goodness knows how long it would be, she thought, before Mr. Blair finished talking to Mr. Andrews. It was silly to have said thank you when he offered the lift, she and Mr. Field could quite well have gone home on their own and Mr. Field was always the gentleman and would have thought nothing of her slipping into a Ladies’.

  Miriam was gracious by habit—she accepted that people like Mrs. Simpson and Field were pleased by the exchange of a few words with a peeress but it was a bore, like many of the jobs attached to marrying George, but with so much that she enjoyed it was wrong to be grudging about small duties. She greeted Mrs. Simpson and Field warmly but with the slight restraint she knew both would think fitting on so sad an occasion.

  “I’m glad that’s over. It’s been such a strain for Mr. Blair.”

  “Yes, poor gentleman,” Field said. “He’s looking very poorly.”

  Miriam agreed for certainly Tom was looking wretched—but she spoke absently for she was thinking of Selina. She had looked quite terrible when she answered the few questions the coroner had put to her, in fact Miriam had been afraid she was going to break down.

  “Miss Grierson is looking ill too.”

  Mrs. Simpson and Field murmured agreement but there was something—not exactly an exchanged look between the two but a sort of mental nudging of each other—which Miriam caught. Now I wonder, she thought, does Mrs. Simpson know something? Tom can’t have lied, can he, and he and Selina been carrying on in the house? I must have a word with Mrs. S. alone, she’ll never talk in front of Field.

  “I’m on my way to the Ladies’. How about you, Mrs. Simpson?”

  It was a miracle. Mrs. Simpson had not supposed there was a Ladies’. Lady Worn, before a shadowy, if exalted figure, turned into the best type of guardian angel.

  “Well, I don’t mind,” she said, and followed Miriam down the passage.

  The Ladies’ Room was small and shabby but intimate so when Mrs. Simpson left the lavatory it was not only relief which made her more talkative than she would have been normally.

  “I feel worried about Miss Grierson,” Miriam said, pretending to be interested only in powdering her nose. “I had no idea she was so devoted to Mrs. Blair, had you?”

  Mrs. Simpson ran some cold water into the grey-looking basin, there was no hot.

  “She came round the day after. Terrible state she was in. I was surprised and so was Mr. Field. I knew she was like a relative, but we never saw much of her, you see she was not intimate with Madam like some.”

  Miriam made up her mouth.

  “More Mr. Blair’s friend, of course.”

  “That’s right, brought up as brother and sister they were.”

  There was no mistaking the honesty of that statement. About Selina Mrs. Simpson knew nothing. The mental nudging Miriam had felt between her and Field had been merely the shared memory of how both had seen her on the day after Helen’s suicide.

  Suddenly Mrs. Simpson spoke again.

  “Funny about that paper.”

  Miriam, for a second, did not catch what she meant.

  “The one Mr. Task said he gave Mrs. Blair? Why funny?”

  Mrs. Simpson had finished washing. She let the water out and slowly dried her hands on the roller towel,

  “What happened to it?”

  “Mr. Cale said he took it to read in bed.”

  “But after?”

  “I suppose whoever did the room threw it away.”

  “Mrs. Wragge did the room. She never threw it away. I never allow my women to throw anything away, shocking tearers up they are, and what I say is once the dustman’s had it it’s too late to be sorry. So bring the paper basket to me. That’s my rule.”

  Miriam at that moment saw nothing of interest in what happened to the paper.

  “Perhaps Mrs. Wragge kept it to read,” she said casually and led the way to the entrance to the court.

  Celia, on Edward’s instructions, had tried to talk to Selina, but she had no opportunity for the moment the inquest was over Selina made for the door. She had answered the questions put to her in court with composure, but it was clearly all that she could do.

  “I must go,” she said in a strangled voice. “Please let me go.”

  Celia, who had not been told that Selina had any place in Helen’s story, was amazed. She and Helen were never very close, she thought, looking after Selina’s tweedy hunched figure, but she looks terrible. Why? She wondered if Edward would think she ought not to have taken a “no” but insisted on driving home with Selina. She was saved worrying about that by Anthony; he had to rush off, he said, to get to his office. Anthony, though a bore, seemed a reliable sort, so Celia passed Selina to him.

  “Edward told me to be nice to Selina, but she’s rushed off, she looks awful.”


  “No wonder,” said Anthony. “Most upsetting for everybody. I’ll take a taxi if I can find one and offer her a lift. But I expect she would rather be alone.”

  Celia saw Edward was still talking to George so she joined Olivia, who was talking to Bernard. Bernard was that morning a frustrated journalist.

  “That got us nowhere, I suppose now we shall never know why Helen did it.”

  Celia knew Edward thought the least said to Bernard the better, but now that the inquest was over and it had been decided Helen was out of her mind, surely it could not matter that he should know that there had at one time been worries.

  “I think Tom may go on trying to find out, for he feels terrible because he thinks it’s his fault.”

  Celia was rewarded with flattering attention.

  “His fault? My dear, why?”

  Olivia almost shuddered with excitement.

  “He blames himself!”

  “I don’t know why,” Celia confessed. “Edward just said it was a bit of nonsense, but he and George were awfully worried at one time that he was going to tell the coroner it was his fault, that Helen knew what she was doing, and that would have been ghastly, Edward says, because it would have messed up the funeral.”

  Bernard’s mind was clicking like a ticker-tape machine. Blames himself! Of course that could be because he was out when it happened, but however distraught Tom was he could scarcely blame himself for that. Helen was not an invalid needing watching. A new idea possessed him. Suppose Tom had not gone back with Selina, as they had all taken for granted that he had? Suppose there was another woman? Had someone tipped Helen off? That could be the answer.

  Olivia was obviously enthralled.

  “What made Tom change his mind, he didn’t say anything like that this morning?”

  The look of hunger for news on Olivia’s monkey face worried Celia. Had she said something she shouldn’t? If Edward found out would he be cross? Now, when she was so much more sensible a person than she had ever been, it would be sickening if she had done something silly. Especially as she had not yet had a chance to tell Edward what a different person she was going to be.

  “I don’t know, Edward didn’t tell me. Well, I must be going, I expect we’ll be meeting somewhere soon.”

  Olivia looked at Bernard and he at her.

  “I’ll get a taxi,” said Bernard.

  “Do,” said Olivia.

  Mrs. Wragge had been in charge of the house and the preparation of lunch while Mrs. Simpson was at the inquest. Leaving Field to see after Tom, whom she now called poor-Mr.-Blair as if it were one word, Mrs. Simpson, having changed out of her dark suit she had worn at the inquest, hurried to her kitchen, her eyes darting about like dragon-flies looking for Wragge deeds of omission and commission. All, rather aggravatingly, seemed in order, it would have been satisfying to get the taste of the morning out of her mouth by giving Mrs. Wragge what her mother had called “a good wroughting.” However, Mrs. Wragge herself offended.

  “Did it pass off all right, Mrs. Simpson?”

  “Off!” Mrs. Simpson glared. “Inquests don’t pass off, they are proper enquiries as to how a person died.” Then she relented. “The coroner decided Madam passed on while the balance of her mind was disturbed.”

  Mrs. Wragge was disappointed.

  “Didn’t anything come out? I mean, why she done it?”

  Mrs. Simpson was about to give a short answer to that when she remembered the newspaper.

  “I want you to think back to Tuesday, Mrs. Wragge. Do you remember, I asked you to do Mr. Blair’s dressing-room?”

  Mrs. Wragge was taking off her nylon overall.

  “That’s right. Mr. Cale slept there.”

  “Was there a newspaper left in the room? I know you always bring me the paper baskets before you throw anything away, but Tuesday being so upset a day could you have thrown it out?”

  Mrs. Wragge sounded huffy.

  “You should know me better, Mrs. Simpson. First thing you ever told me when I started to work here, and I’m ever so careful about it. There wasn’t no paper in the room and if there had been I’d have brought it to you.”

  Mrs. Wragge was, even by Mrs. Simpson’s standards, satisfactory, so she did not want her leaving the house feeling hurt, for that might mean notice given in the morning. So, though unwilling, she was forced to explain.

  “It seems that Mr. Bernard Task, who was at the dinner on Monday, gave Madam the News of the World just as they were all leaving. Something about a school was in it they’d been talking about and Madam hadn’t read it. Mr. Cale found the paper in the drawing-room and took it, so he said, up to his room to read in bed.”

  Mrs. Wragge was incensed.

  “If he did he took it away with him. It wasn’t there when I did the room. I’ll take my oath on that.”

  Mrs. Simpson had got the answer she expected. Mrs. Wragge must, of course, be right, but if Mr. Cale had taken the paper away with him why not have said so? He had made it sound as if he had left it in the bedroom.

  “I was sure it wasn’t there, just thought I’d ask. It came up and I was interested. Anyway, it’s all over now.”

  Mrs. Wragge fetched her hat, coat, gloves and bag from the scullery where they always hung.

  “Who else besides those who was here that night gave evidence?”

  “Only doctors and police and that. Very healthy Madam was, except for the gas she’d taken.”

  Mrs. Wragge wriggled into her coat.

  “Not like a murder, of course, take a good look round then they do for those who might know something.”

  Mrs. Simpson stiffened from the bottom of her spine to the crown of her head.

  “Madam was not the sort to be mixed up with a murder, and if she had been, looking round as you call it, would only lead to Madam’s friends.”

  Mrs. Wragge, describing the conversation later to Mr. Wragge, said: “I meant to keep my mouth shut but the silly old cow narked me.”

  “That’s what you think. But all her friends weren’t posh. Twice I seen her at Rotherhithe, where my sister lives, and I’ve seen the house she’s gone into.”

  It was one of the greatest temptations of Mrs. Simpson’s life to ask for more. But the habit of a lifetime prevented her. Her voice was dismissing.

  “Helping some poor family no doubt. Good-morning, Mrs. Wragge.”

  In their taxi Olivia and Bernard spoke in private voices.

  “My dear, I never thought of Tom,” Bernard hissed. “He doesn’t look the sort, does he? But who?”

  Olivia was struggling to accept another possibility.

  “It needn’t be anybody else, it could be Selina.”

  Bernard swung round to stare at her.

  “Selina! Darling! How could it be Selina?”

  Olivia was thinking out loud.

  “The moment I saw Selina at the funeral I knew there was something wrong. She and Helen weren’t that close but she looks just terrible. And another thing, she came to the funeral alone and went back alone.”

  “Tom had stayed the night at Wyster.”

  “The night before but not the night afterwards. Why didn’t she drive back with him?”

  Bernard still could not accept the idea.

  “It’s fantastic! Look at Selina. I can’t see her in bed with anyone, but carrying on under Helen’s nose—I ask you, darling, is she the type?”

  Olivia was still following her own line of thought.

  “Blames himself! If that’s true no wonder Selina is looking like death warmed up, for I’d take a bet Tom isn’t seeing her. Certainly he didn’t say a word to her at the funeral nor this morning.”

  Bernard accepted that Olivia was shrewd, especially about love affairs, but he was finding a love affair between Tom and Selina almost impossible to accept.

 
“Suppose you are right, who told Helen about it?”

  Olivia took her powder compact and lipstick out of her bag and began to tidy her face.

  “Nobody. What Helen died for was to do with herself. She was smart enough to know how to put a stop to anything Tom was up to.”

  “Unless they were planning a bunk.”

  Olivia, her head on one side, was peering at her hat. She had bought it especially for the inquest, but now she decided, if she gave it a month’s rest to get the smell of the coroner’s court out of it, there was no reason why it could not have a social life. She put away her compact. Odd, she thought, people like Bernard were supposed to be so perceptive, but that was a damned silly suggestion.

  “Tom couldn’t do that.”

  Bernard had already seen it was a foolish idea.

  “I’m just fumbling. There must be a reason.”

  Olivia took a cigarette out of her bag.

  “I’d forgotten about the News of the World until you told the coroner about it. If Helen had read it that could be the reason. It would be too ghastly to learn from reading it in a paper that whoever it was you were in love with was off with somebody else.”

  Bernard was lighting her cigarette, as she spoke he stiffened, held by an idea.

  “Edward didn’t say she hadn’t read it, did he?”

  “Not exactly. He said he and George had found it on the sofa, then he took it up to read in bed.”