The Silent Speaker

by Noel Streatfeild

  “I’m so sorry,” she had sniffed. “You shouldn’t have been kind. It’s just the end of everything for me. No one should ever put all their eggs in one basket, Mr. Browne, because if you do and something happens to the basket you find you’ve got nothing—nothing at all. Life looks very long when that happens.”

  Anthony would have offered a cosy-sounding platitude, but before he had time to find one the taxi had stopped outside Selina’s hotel, and muttering a quick “thank you” she was through the revolving doors.

  Alone in the taxi Anthony had puzzled over what Selina had said. It didn’t seem nice one woman feeling like that about another. But what else could she have meant? Funny talking about it. Lucky he was the only one to hear, he could guess what Olivia would make of a story like that. It wasn’t nice to think of two women being like that, but sorrow was sorrow and he couldn’t help his heart contracting when he thought of Selina’s expression and heard again “Life looks very long when that happens.”

  Anthony could not explain about Selina to Bernard and Olivia. Nobody must ever know the dreadful thing he had thought. He was shocked he could have had such an idea. Quietly he said:

  “Mrs. Cale asked me to give Miss Grierson a lift home after the inquest. I thought she didn’t seem herself. When the band gets a rest I’ll step out and have a word with Johnnie. Tell me again what it was exactly you wanted to know.”

  Getting information out of Johnnie proved easier than Anthony expected. He remembered Johnnie as a rather dull-witted boy who only came to life when he was playing the drums. But a year of knocking around with the members of Andy Digue’s band had brightened him. Anthony had no idea of it but Johnnie was grateful to him, for he was one of those who ran the boys’ club and so had made it possible for him to learn to play the drums. There had been plenty of gossip amongst “the boys” about their leader, so if Anthony wanted to have it he was welcome. It had been closed lips until the wedding was in the papers, but now, spliced to his heiress and having a nice time at that Capri, Johnnie did not suppose it mattered to Andy Digue if he talked, especially to a real gentleman like Mr. Browne.

  “I only see the bint once. Not young but a proper good looker.”

  “What was she like?”

  “’ad a ’at on so I didn’t see ’er ’air but a smashin’ looker, quite extr’ordinary thin she was.”

  “What sort of height?”

  Johnnie shrugged.

  “Ordinary I reckon, I don’t remember so she wasn’t special tall.”

  Helen had been rather below normal height, but she certainly was extraordinarily thin. It was annoying about the hat.

  “Thanks, Johnnie. This isn’t for myself, but if I knew who that woman was I might have been able to help somebody who’s going through a bad time.”

  Apart from his respect for Anthony Johnnie had the easily touched heart of the cockney.

  “I wish I could ’elp, straight I do.” Then he pursed his lips as a thought struck him. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s not much but ’er name was Lois, all us boys know that.”

  Back at the table Anthony recorded as nearly as he could what Johnnie had said.

  “So I think, Olivia, we might go home. If Helen was fond of someone it was not Andy Digue.”

  Olivia raised her crinkled little face to Bernard’s.

  “Blast Lois whoever she is, I was sure we were on to something. Now we’ll have to go through that paper all over again.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Simpson and Field were having elevenses. The terrible week was over, the funeral and inquest behind them, shock was wearing off.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Field,” Mrs. Simpson said. “You done your best, no one can’t do more. But if Mrs. Wragge is right—and I never caught her out in a lie—and Madam did go to those parts, I still wonder why. I can’t get it out of my head the News of the World is mixed up in it some way. I know Mr. Cale didn’t tell the coroner he left it in the dressing-room, but he as good as. Terrible to see Mr. Blair as he is.”

  Field stirred his tea.

  “No better this morning?”

  Mrs. Simpson shook her head.

  “He seemed lower if anything. Well, I suppose Sunday is hard for him, I mean he was home all day and he and Madam often went out in the car, you know how Sundays are.”

  “I had hoped his Lordship would have taken him to Wyster after the inquest.”

  “I read a piece in the paper about it, they said the place was staying open to the public until the end of the month, it seems thousands come to see over it. It said both his Lordship and her Ladyship were guides—seems funny for them, doesn’t it?”

  “Glad of the half-crowns, I expect. They can’t keep up those places to-day, more’s the pity. But of course it wouldn’t do for Mr. Blair, not with all that coming and going.”

  Mrs. Simpson poured herself out another cup of tea.

  “It gets me down, Mr. Field, for unless the bell or telephone rings, after Mrs. Wragge has gone, unless you’re here, the house is like a grave.”

  “Must be,” Field agreed, “for I suppose Madam was always in and out.”

  “Not in my kitchen, very particular she was about that, knowing my ways, but she’d be in her flower room or running up and down the stairs, and the wireless always playing, or there’d be people to lunch. Then there were her hobbies, I’ve told you about them, petit point and pottery and such. Often she’d ring to show me something she was doing, or that’s why she said she rang, but I sometimes thought it was she couldn’t bear to be alone a minute. Never one for her own company was Madam.”

  Field knew what this was leading up to so he spoke first.

  “And now there’s no excuse for employing me, that’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

  Mrs. Simpson swept the cake crumbs on her plate into a pile with her knife. When she looked up again Field was shocked to see that, unthinkable though it was, Mrs. Simpson was not far off tears. Controlling them made her voice harsh.

  “That’s the long and the short of it. And I don’t know if I can stand it.”

  Mrs. Simpson and Field gazed at each other. Between them, on the table as it were, lay their shared knowledge of what it meant to be a good servant, and what they knew did not include giving notice when your employers were in trouble. Field said:

  “I’m not so booked up as some years, there’s not the money about for entertaining. I’ll come round just the same whenever I’m free.”

  Mrs. Simpson pressed her lips together and looked at her plate while she blinked away the mist which was before her eyes. But when at last she spoke she sounded no more emotional than if she were giving an order for bread.

  “Thank you, Mr. Field. There’s always a meal here for you. That will save your pocket.”

  As Mrs. Simpson spoke Field thought, not about the meals he need not provide, but of the pleasant meals and company he had managed to enjoy during the last week in spite of the sorrow in the house. He thought too of those snacks and drinks they had taken together after Mrs. Blair’s dinners. He had always looked forward to them, and he suspected so had Mrs. Simpson. A thought so frail it was a mere wisp blew across his mind. But small as it was it made him look at Mrs. Simpson with new eyes.

  “I’ll be along whenever I’m free. You can be sure of that, Mrs. S.”

  * * *

  Miriam, when her nose was on the scent of a good cause, dismissed as rubbish rushing in where angels feared to tread. So on the Monday—while the gardener and their handyman butler, thanking God the tourist season was nearly over, disgustedly walked round the grounds of Wyster, picking up on pointed sticks every kind of waste the sightseers had left behind—Miriam got into her car headed for Selina’s hotel.

  Miriam was right in supposing Selina might be planning to return to Ireland. In fact, as soon as she got back from the in
quest she tried to think about it for the thought of her cottage was as if a pain-killer was laid on an agonising burn. The soft, comforting hills. Though the sea came to the foot of her garden she lived a long way from the Atlantic, so unless there was a storm the tide lapped in and out with the gentleness of a sleeping child’s breathing. There was often no sound at all except that gentle lap and the mewing of the sea birds, though now the seal cows would be sobbing down the water to call their mates. To think of her part of Ireland was to know where peace came dropping slow, and how her whole body screamed for peace. Yet easy as it would be to return to Ireland she could not make the decision to go. While she remained there could be at any minute a note left by hand, or a telephone call. It was incredible that now that Tom knew he and she were in no way involved in Helen’s death he could go on refusing to see her. He had said in answer to her request to see him “For God’s sake no, Selina,” but that was with the strain of the funeral and the inquest ahead of him; now they were behind him surely he must need her as much as she needed him. Then with sobs shaking her Selina cringed from the memory of his face when he had seen her at the funeral. It was as if he was looking at some horribly disfigured body. Oh no, that could not be Tom looking at her, for never, never could Tom look at her like that.

  Miriam’s telephone call was a relief. She wanted, she said, Selina’s help in dealing with Miss Osborne, for both she and her husband felt they should be doing something about the Blair children. She would be in London on Monday and would telephone her. Selina doubted whether Verily and Tim would want attentions from the Worns, but perhaps, if both were invited to Wyster for the half term, it might be a help. For herself it meant putting off arranging her journey to Ireland at least until after Miriam’s phone call, and perhaps longer if something had to be done about Miss Osborne. She knew it was weak of her to snatch at excuses to stay, but she also knew she would continue to snatch.

  Miriam had remembered the number of Selina’s room so she swept through the hotel lounge and into the lift. It was not necessary for Selina to tell the desk staff she would see nobody without an appointment because in that hotel no visitor went up to a bedroom without a telephone call being put through first to ask if they were to be sent up. But the hotel rules were made without taking into account the Miriams of the world. So when, in answer to a knock, Selina praying it was the page boy with a note, opened her door she might have been naked so hopelessly was she unprepared for Miriam’s raking eyes.

  When determined to help an under-dog—and she could not recall a more under-doggish-looking under-dog than Selina—Miriam believed in clear speaking as the best way of getting results.

  “This nonsense of Tom not seeing you has to stop. There he is alone in St. John’s Wood looking like death warmed up, and here are you alone in a hotel swollen with crying. It’s ridiculous and it’s time you did something about it.”

  Selina, knowing she was not going out, had on her worst clothes, and even her best clothes would have been discarded from most women’s wardrobes.

  “I know this is an awful suit but it’s comfortable to travel in, and it’s such a long journey.” Selina’s voice trailed away before Miriam’s about-to-burst-into-flames glare.

  “You can’t be thinking of running away. If you do you’ll lose all chance of marrying the man.”

  To have that innermost secret dragged out and almost shouted at her made Selina feel as if her legs might give way. She stumbled to her bed and sat down.

  “Please go. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Poor creature, thought Miriam. She’s lost all spirit, it’s going to be hard work. Out loud she said:

  “I believe Helen killed herself because of something she read in that newspaper Bernard Task left with her, you remember he got it out of his car. I got hold of a copy of the paper but there’s so much in it that it would take months to track down all the people mentioned and find which was connected with Helen. But if she had some secret in her life somebody must know about it. Tom talked to you in a way he talked to nobody else, did he ever even casually drop a hint about Helen? You know, that he thought she was worried or something like that?”

  “We never talked about Helen except when Tom said they’d done this or that together. He was awfully proud of her, as you know, looking so lovely and being such a success socially, so he sometimes talked about her like that.”

  “And of course, like any other man, Tom liked being leant on, for you must admit she depended on Tom more than most women do on their husbands.”

  “Oh yes,” Selina agreed, “that’s what made me go to Ireland, it was unthinkable to hurt her, Tom would never have done that even if I would have.”

  “Think hard,” Miriam urged, “people placed as you and Tom were could have had few secrets from each other. Didn’t he ever say he was worried about her?”

  A slow flush crept over Selina’s cheeks. She put her hands up to cover them; how shaming to have reached middle-age and still blush. But what she remembered that Tom had said had brought on at the time the worst fit of jealousy from which she had suffered. She looked imploringly at Miriam, surely that conversation could be of no interest. But she saw that Miriam was implacable, she had seen the blush and would remain in her bedroom until she knew what had caused it.

  “Once he did. It was about her nightmares.”

  “Nightmares!” Surprise forced Miriam to repeat the word. Nightmares were things which she, who slept solidly and without difficulty, connected only with over-eating in childhood so they seemed an unlikely affliction for the soignée Helen. People as thin as Helen might suffer from insomnia, for being so thin her nerves must be nearer the surface than were the nerves of those who were better covered, but not nightmares. “I should never have connected Helen with nightmares.”

  “She had periods of them, like some people get migraines. When she had them she worried Tom terribly. Usually he just said ‘Helen’s having her nightmares’ or something like that, but once he described what happened. He said she would wake screaming, and even after she was awake she would cling to him sobbing, then he would hold her in his arms until she fell asleep.”

  Miriam looked sympathetically at Selina.

  “How you must have hated hearing that. Did Tom say if he knew what the nightmares were about?”

  “She wouldn’t say and she wouldn’t see a doctor about them. But because of them, except at the time of my mother’s death and when I was getting rid of the cottage, they never spent a night apart.”

  “I wonder if the nightmares were getting worse, I mean if they were bad enough for her to feel life wasn’t worth living.”

  “I don’t think they were worse or Tom wouldn’t have left her—I mean he’d have just dropped me and gone straight home. Oh, how I wish now he had.”

  “No good thinking of that,” Miriam said briskly. “So that’s all you know?”

  “Yes.” Then a memory floated back into Selina’s mind. “That’s not true. He said that when she was screaming she always used the same words: ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it.’”

  “I believe people have killed themselves because of insomnia, so I suppose you might because of nightmares. I wonder if Verily knew about them. I mean her mother might have told her she had them or Tom could have told the children to keep quiet because their mother was resting after one, you know the sort of thing.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’d like to question her all the same. Anything’s worth trying.”

  Such a suggestion was a shot in the arm to Selina. Verily must be spared that.

  “If anyone questions Verily it had better be me.”

  Miriam regretfully laid aside temporarily her plans for taming Miss Osborne.

  “Very well, but do it soon. If not for your own or Tom’s sake think of the children. What sort of Christmas holidays do you think they are going to have if their father is in
his present state and you, whom they will expect to find around, have gone without a word back to Ireland?”

  Selina did not need that situation described.

  “You needn’t worry, this talk has decided me to see both children. I shall telephone Miss Osborne as soon as you have gone.”

  Miriam stood on the kerb outside the hotel doing something most unusual for her—hesitating where to go. Was there a clue in those nightmares? What had Helen not been able to do that had given her nightmares for the rest of her life? Probably something quite idiotic like not having the nerve to put her horse over a particularly high wall when she was an adolescent, adolescents took failures so terribly to heart. Of one thing she was sure, having found even a possible clue she must follow it up. What made her hesitate was who to tackle next. Tom was the obvious one but even Miriam, though knowing what she did was for Tom’s ultimate good, boggled at that. Asking Tom questions would be like prodding at a wound with a sharp stick. No, not Tom. She got into her car and headed for Celia’s flat.

  Celia was delighted to see Miriam and invited her to luncheon. With Miriam she felt she need not be careful what she said, for Edward told George everything so presumably George passed it on to Miriam.

  “Come into the kitchen and talk while I get lunch. Edward saw Tom last night, he says he’s no better. I think Edward’s getting a bit fed up with him. He thinks it’s time he snapped out of it and got back to work.”

  “Of course he ought, what’s the good of sitting alone brooding? George is going up to see him one day this week, perhaps he can do something.” Miriam sat at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. “Celia, you knew Helen well at school, didn’t you?”

  Celia was opening a jar of prawns having decided to add a prawn salad to the cold lunch.

  “Yes, we were great friends, we were in the same bedroom for about a year.”