‘Well! I must say!’ Mara raised her hands in pleased consternation.
‘And on top of that,’ Nigel pursued, ‘she’s got her own worry. Suppose she killed Oswald?’
‘We won’t suppose that,’ Lionel said, with dangerous calmness.
Mara put her hand on his. ‘Yes, we will. Why should I kill Oswald?’
‘You told us the motive at tea, that day in June. You said there was only one thing you’d murder for. Revenge.’
As if he’d knocked the breath out of them both, they faced him open-mouthed and speechless. In the silence that followed, the plop of a water-rat diving startled like a depth-charge.
‘Revenge? But why on earth should Mara—?’ said Lionel at last.
So you don’t know about it, thought Nigel, Well, I won’t be the one to tell you. He said lightly:
‘Oh, Mara’s always had it in for—she’s the kind who must take it out of people. You should know,’ Nigel went on vaguely. ‘But, going back to your first question, if you put it like this—which of you all would I most hate to be hanged for the murder of Oswald—I’ll tell you straight away. Robert Seaton.’
He noticed Lionel’s tense form relaxing. ‘Well, that’s something,’ the young man said. ‘Not that there was any danger, I suppose, of—’ His voice trailed away.
‘I’m afraid there is, though. Your father had a stronger motive than any one, except your stepmother, for doing it. And—’
‘But he was out for a walk. He wouldn’t—’
‘Wouldn’t go for a walk if he’d been expecting Oswald? But he might have gone to meet him. He went out on the road to Chillingham. He’d forgotten that Oswald wouldn’t know the short-cut through the wood had been wired up. He’d expect him to come along the road.’
The expression of misery was deepening upon Mara’s face. Her white fists lay beside her like tear-soaked, crumpled handkerchiefs. Nigel went on:
‘If the police find out where Oswald stayed when he reached England, at Bristol or wherever it was; if they find anything to connect him with Robert—a letter, say, from Robert inviting him to come along to Ferry Lacey, to come secretly—well, it’ll be very awkward for Robert indeed. You can see that.’
‘But my father didn’t meet him on the road,’ said Lionel. ‘So—’
‘There’s no proof that Oswald was murdered at Plash Meadow. No proof he ever reached it.’
Mara Torrance put her right hand slowly into the water. The Thames was not boiling, but the gesture unaccountably reminded Nigel of a medieval ordeal. She said:
‘It would help if—if someone had seen him, Oswald, at Plash Meadow that night?’
‘It might. Depends.’ Nigel studied her averted face. ‘But perjury never helps, not in the long run,’ he added.
‘Don’t be a fool, Mara,’ exclaimed Lionel, with a suddenly hostile glance at Nigel. ‘You can’t trust him.’
‘I can’t trust any one,’ she replied drearily. ‘You’d better leave me to talk to Strangeways, darling. Go along. I must talk to him alone.’
‘No. I think it’s a mistake.’
‘Go away. Please. I’m asking you.’
‘Oh, well, if I’m not wanted—’ Lionel sounded, for once, very young. Sulkily, he began to get out of the canoe.
‘One thing before you go,’ said Nigel. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for some days. You said you slept right through the thunderstorm that night. But the night Finny Black set on me, and I shouted for help, you said it woke you up, and you came running out of the house at once. The statements don’t seem to correspond.’
Hands on hips, Lionel Seaton gazed down from the bank. His face was hard. ‘I can only suggest,’ he said, ‘that thunder doesn’t wake me up, and shouts for help do. Make what you like of it.’ He turned on his heel and strode off across the meadow.
‘You don’t think—?’ began Mara.
‘It may be the simple truth. He was a soldier.’
A silence fell between them. Now they were alone, Mara seemed to find it difficult to begin. Nigel studied the lank black hair, that had a gloss on it now, the pasty-white face with dark smudges like bruises under the eyes, the violent red of her mouth.
‘Are you in love with him?’
The girl came out of her abstraction. ‘That’s not the point.’ She patted the cushions beside her, giving Nigel a bold, delinquent-child look. ‘Come and sit here. Oh, it’s all right,’ she added impatiently. ‘I shan’t seduce you. Why is every one afraid of me? I can’t talk to you while you’re looking at me like a mental specialist across a desk.’
Nigel moved over to her side. ‘That better?’
‘Mm. Nice, kind Uncle Strangeways.’ As if involuntarily, she had crept closer to him. He could feel the whole length of her leg pressed against his. She began to talk very fast, looking away. ‘I suppose I am. In love with Lionel, I mean. I’d like to go to bed with him, of course. It seems about all I’m good for—to go to bed with people. But he wants me to marry him. And I daren’t. I’m no good, you see, I’m hopeless. I wouldn’t care, if it was just Lionel—I’d risk it. But—’
She dried up suddenly, like the brief shower that is a precursor to the deluge.
‘But you’re afraid of hurting Robert Seaton, through his son?’ Nigel prompted.
She nodded dumbly, wrenching hard at Nigel’s hand. From the deck of a passing river steamer, three lads whistled and cat-called.
‘You see? It’s taken for granted I’m a tart.’
‘That’s absurd. They’d whistle at a Salvation Army lass with spectacles.’
The waves from the steamer’s wake lifted the canoe, jostling them together. Nigel felt her breast against his arm. She flinched away, as if something had scorched her.
‘I don’t know where to begin,’ she said, breathing hard.
‘I should start at the beginning,’ said Nigel gently. ‘With Oswald. That day in the Quantocks. When you were fifteen.’
Mara’s body had gone rigid beside him, as if gripped by lockjaw. A lark sang its strident song interminably above the meadow. At last she muttered:
‘So you knew?’
‘I guessed. It was the most likely explanation. He—?’
‘Oh, yes, he raped me,’ she said bleakly. ‘Damn that lark! There was one singing when—’
‘And you got ill. And Robert pulled you through it. And Oswald had to vanish. Well, it was all a long time ago. Hasn’t the account been paid? On both sides?’
Mara gave him an oddly furtive look. ‘On both sides? You think I killed Oswald?’
‘That’s not what I meant. But never mind. So Robert got rid of Oswald, organised his “suicide?”’
‘Robert was—I can’t describe how wonderful he was to me. He never put a foot wrong: I can see that now. Gentle and bracing, each at just the right time. Can you understand? It wasn’t his fault that I’m—what I am. He stayed with me nearly the whole time. All day, for days after. And at nights—Janet was sleeping in my room—but I used to wake up screaming, I had awful nightmares, and Robert was always there in the next room to come in and soothe me down. Janet was no good. And my father—’ she shrugged her shoulders with an ugly movement.
‘They are the only people who knew about it? Not Lionel?’
‘I’ve never dared tell him.’
‘Which means you do love him. Well, I think you’ve been repressing all this far too long.’
‘Repressing? Oh, I don’t believe all that Freud stuff—it’s out of date,’ she said, with a return to her old, brittle manner.
‘You don’t quite understand me.’ Nigel, gazing at the fleecy clouds overhead, said very carefully, ‘Do you know why you’re so unhappy? It’s not because of what happened to you then. It’s because you half liked it.’
‘No! No! No! No!’ The cries came out of her mouth like blood pulsating from a severed artery. Her hand writhed in his, the nails drove into his palm.
‘Yes,’ Nigel said firmly. ‘And why in heaven’s name shouldn�
��t you? Nothing unnatural about that. Nothing to be ashamed of. Yes.’
‘No,’ she whimpered. ‘No. No.’
Nigel’s voice went steadily, soothingly on. ‘That’s why your head of Robert went wrong, and the figure in that bit of wood-carving you did. You wanted it to be Robert. But Oswald came up out of your unconscious and pushed Robert aside, and took possession of your artist’s hands, and made the clay head in his own image. It wouldn’t have happened if you’d been altogether unwilling, if you’d altogether hated it—what Oswald did to you. It happened because part of you liked it, and the rest of you was terribly shocked and ashamed by it. Think, my dear. Remember back. Be absolutely honest with yourself. There was a lark singing. Remember? Don’t be afraid of it. It’s a bogy—a phantom of guilt you’ve kept battened down all these years. It’s been poisoning your life, don’t you see?’
‘Yes,’ said Mara at last, after minutes of silence. Her voice was quite different. For the first time, Nigel dared to turn his head and look at her. Tears were streaming down her face, which was calm, drained, almost happy, as if she had been listening to great music. ‘Yes. You’re right. It’s quite true. I remember now.’
‘Listen,’ said Nigel urgently. ‘How did you get this conflict? Did any one, say at the time, you were a wicked girl? Your father?’
‘Oh, no. It was kept from him. Till after Oswald had disappeared.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Certain.’
‘Someone else, then?’
‘Need I talk about it any more?’ she asked childishly.
‘Yes. Just this one thing, my dear.’
Mara sobbed weakly for a moment or two. Then she said: ‘After it happened, I ran away from him. Back to the house. Janet was there. I didn’t want to talk to her, but she took hold of me; she dragged it out of me. I was frightened—she looked so angry when I told her. She kept on asking questions. Horrible questions. Details. Yes, she somehow made it seem as if it had been my fault. She made me feel I’d done something abominable. I think I’d have gone mad there and then if Robert hadn’t come in. He stopped her. He was kind to me, like you’ve been . . . Oh, listen! The lark has stopped singing!’
‘He’s done his work for the day. And a very good day’s work.’
‘With some help from Mr Strangeways.’ Mara grinned at him: a simple impudent grin—not a trace of the delinquent-child look any more. ‘Oh, dear, I suppose I’m working up to a crashing transference—isn’t that what you call it? You’d better watch out!’
‘Good Lord, this hasn’t been a course of deep psycho-analysis, my dear! You did it yourself. We just chose the right moment, and you had the courage to call out a ghost and stand up to it.’
‘Yes,’ she said after a long silence. ‘I do love Lionel. Perhaps it’ll be all right now. I’m going to bathe.’ She stood up in the canoe, stripping off her dress. There was a bathing-suit beneath it. ‘After all, it must happen to thousands of people—adequately-sexed girls anyway.’ Standing there before him, the glow of the late afternoon sun mellowing her white skin, she had never looked so un-selfconscious or so sexless. She climbed down into the water and swam away.
‘Of course,’ murmured Nigel, wearily shutting his eyes. ‘And good-bye to a promising sculptor, maybe.’
Presently Mara clambered out on to the bank. She asked Nigel to hand her towel and dress up to her. When, dried and clothed, she was back in the canoe, he asked what it was she had wanted to talk with him about privately.
She picked at a button of the velvet cushion. ‘It’s all very difficult, but—’ She took a deep breath and, turning her eyes away from Nigel, said: ‘Well, I think you ought to ask Rennell who he was talking to downstairs that night.’
‘The night Oswald was murdered?’
She nodded. ‘You said it might be important if someone else—if someone had seen him at Plash Meadow.’
Gradually Nigel drew the facts from her. She had gone to bed at eleven-thirty, leaving Rennell over a whisky bottle: he was well oiled, but not incapable. At about twelve-fifteen, having been awakened by the start of the thunderstorm, she heard voices from the studio below. All she could be sure of now was that they were men’s voices and that one was her father’s. They were speaking in low tones, not angrily. She assumed at the time that the other man was Robert Seaton. Afterwards, when she knew Robert had been out walking, she thought the visitor must have been Lionel: but when she asked him, Lionel denied it. She had then asked her father, who laughed it off, saying he must have been talking to himself under the influence of drink. She had thought no more about it till the police investigations opened, several days later. The voices had stopped after five minutes, and she had thought she heard the french windows being opened and closed.
‘Did they both go out?’
‘No. Rennell didn’t. At least I presume he didn’t. I heard someone moving about below, grunting a bit, like Rennell does, after the window was shut.’
‘But he didn’t go up to bed then.’
‘No.’ Mara picked nervously at the button again. ‘I wouldn’t have told you this if there seemed any real chance of it’s getting him into trouble. I mean, if the visitor was Oswald, he certainly left the studio alive.’
‘But Finny Black saw your father standing outside the french windows at about two a.m.’
‘Well, I didn’t hear him go out. And I was awake till—till after Finny found the head in the dairy. Besides, why should Rennell want to murder him?’
Nigel raised his eyebrows.
‘To avenge my honour?’ Mara laughed harshly. ‘Oh, dear me, you don’t know him if you think that. Besides, he could avenge it just as effectively by handing Oswald over to the police.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
Mara looked rather confused. ‘It all happened so long ago. Of course, Rennell blustered a lot at the time. When he’d been told. But—’
‘But he was making a good thing out of it? Free board and lodging?’ said Nigel, with deliberate hardness.
The girl grimaced. ‘I suppose so. But, don’t you see? Even taking that view of it, now that Oswald had reappeared, it was to Rennell’s interest to keep him alive.’
‘Putting it bluntly, he could extract the hush-money from Oswald instead of Robert now? Assuming that Oswald would get back the estate?’
‘Yes. Does it seem awful, talking about one’s father like this? He’s not a bad sort, really—just weak and lazy. And not a genius. Honestly, I don’t think he blackmailed Robert. It was just that Robert felt he must make restitution for his brother.’
Nigel offered no comment on this. He was trying to work out the implications of Mara’s story. It would have been possible for Oswald to have reached Plash Meadow by twelve-fifteen that night, or a little before. But why should he go first to the Old Barn? Either because Rennell had made an appointment with him, or because somebody else at Plash Meadow had done so and failed to keep it, or because at the last moment Oswald funked going straight to the house and decided to try out his resurrection on Rennell first. There was a fourth possibility—that the murderer had instructed Oswald to go to the Old Barn, in order to implicate Rennell Torrance.
The first explanation seemed the simplest. But it implied that it was Rennell whom Oswald had apprised about his return to England. And there were obvious snags about this.
‘Look here, Mara, you’ve got to do some more remembering.’
‘It’s getting cold,’ she said. Her eyes rested on him with misgiving.
‘It was about half an hour after you heard the voices downstairs that you saw Robert and Janet cross the courtyard?’
‘No, a quarter, more likely.’
‘But it was quarter to one when—’
‘Oh, hell, I’ve got so confused about the time. I honestly thought it was half-past twelve striking when I saw them. But the Superintendent said someone saw Robert walking through the village fifteen minutes later, so it must have been quarter to one.’
�
�But it seemed more like quarter than half an hour between the two things?’
‘Well, yes, I must say it does.’
‘I wish to God we could get this time-table definite. However, you saw them by a flash of lightning. You’re certain it was Janet?’
‘Of course.’
‘Think hard. How was she dressed?’
‘She had on a mackintosh, and a dress underneath it.’
‘How do you know there was a dress underneath?’
‘Why, I could see it. Quite a bit of skirt showing below the bottom of the mackintosh?’
‘And Robert? What was he wearing?’
Mara knitted her brows. ‘I couldn’t see him very well, because he was on the far side of Janet, and he’s smaller than she is. A dark suit, I think.’
‘Not a mackintosh.’
‘No. I remember now, thinking she must have borrowed his. I saw his arm swinging. Sort of dark cloth look. But I couldn’t swear to it.’
‘Did he have a hat on?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Hmm.’ Nigel became lost in thought, his unseeing eyes fixed upon Mara Torrance. Presently she said:
‘I’m still here. And I’m getting colder than ever.’
‘What? Oh, yes. You must go back. There’s absolutely nothing else you can remember about that night? However trivial it may seem? No mysterious sounds, movements, will-o’-the-wisps? Nothing?’
‘No . . . Yes! How silly of me! It was such a familiar sight, though—it never occurred to me—Robert was carrying a storm lantern. Your “will-o’-the-wisps” reminded me. In the blackness after the lightning flash it showed for a moment—a faint glow: then they went out of my sight.’
‘Towards the dairy?’
‘No. They were visiting Kitty’s loose-box, don’t you remember?’
‘Of course. And you stayed at the window for some time after that?’
‘Yes.’
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