‘I keep thinking of – of her,’ said Jenny.
‘Not Mrs Forbes? Don’t, my dear!’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Jenny. ‘Oh, Richard, please let me talk about it. It all seems so dreadful. And the most dreadful part of it is that no one really misses her. Carter cried when she went down to the inquest. She admired her, but she didn’t really love her. And her friends – I don’t believe one of them really cared. They were shocked when she shot herself, but they didn’t really care – not really.’
Richard hesitated. Then he said,
‘When something like this happens people either rush in and find they are not wanted, or they stay away and pretend that they haven’t noticed. I think you find that they don’t know quite what to do. Don’t get bitter about it, darling.’
‘I’m not. I just thought it would be rather lonely if it wasn’t for you and Caroline.’
‘Well, you’ve got us,’ said Richard. ‘You’ve got us for keeps, and don’t you forget it.’
‘Oh, Richard, you’re such a comfort!’ said Jenny with the tears in her eyes.
And then the telephone bell rang. Jenny was out of her seat in a moment, her breathing quickened and the colour in her cheeks coming and going. She heard Miss Silver say,
‘Is that you, my dear?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes – yes, it is. Oh, do tell me! What has happened?’
Miss Silver’s voice came clear along the wire.
‘It is all right, my dear. There is nothing for you to be worried about. Dicky Pratt gave his evidence very well indeed. I went over with him and Mrs Pratt. He really could not have done better. And I think he enjoyed himself.’
‘He would,’ said Jenny.
‘Yes, I remember that you said so. A boy of his age does not apprehend the seriousness of the position. Mr Fulbrook gave evidence, and James Mottingley. He did very well indeed. I do not think that he could have failed to convince everyone in the court that he was quite innocent of that poor girl’s death. And then Inspector Abbott came into the witness-box and gave his evidence. You know what that was. It cleared Mr Mottingley completely, and he was discharged. And now, my dear, how is it with you? You have Miss Danesworth and Mr Richard Forbes with you, have you not? I am afraid that this has been a sad and trying time for you. You must look forward to the brighter days which lie ahead. Good-bye, my dear.’
The click of the receiver sounded. Miss Silver was gone. One moment she was there, so much herself, so kind, so efficient, and so helpful, and the next she was gone. She was quite gone. It gave Jenny a curious feeling of unreality.
She hung up the receiver and turned to Richard. He put an arm about her.
‘Yes, I heard,’ he said. ‘Mottingley has had a hard time.’
Jenny was crying. She didn’t know why. Everything was all right as far as it could be all right. She said, ‘Oh, Richard—’ and they stood together for a moment or two. Then she drew herself away and dried her eyes.
‘That’s silly,’ she said. ‘And there’s a letter from Alan. I didn’t open it because – well, because I wanted you to be there. I didn’t feel as if I wanted to read it alone.’
‘Well, I’m here, darling. Go on – open it.’
The letter was in a foreign envelope. Jenny opened it and read:
Dear Jenny,
I don’t know what to say. I feel quite bewildered with it all. Anyhow I don’t see much good in my coming back until the unpleasantness has died away. The chaps that I am with say the same. I think I had better find a job. As a matter of fact I’ve practically got one. It’s with a young Austrian. He’s got to travel for his health. I’ve made great friends with him, and his people are very well off. His mother was Spanish, and the money comes from that side of the family. He is going to pay all the expenses, and I think we shall go to India first of all. He is supposed to be in a warm climate.
Yours affectionately,
Alan Forbes
As Jenny read on her colour rose. When she had finished it she put the letter into Richard’s hand and said in a curious voice,
‘He’s going to India, and he doesn’t leave us any address.’
Richard read the letter.
‘It’s pretty calm,’ he said. ‘Nothing about the little girls, I see.’
‘There’s nothing about anyone except himself,’ said Jenny. ‘But there’s one thing – it does give me a free hand with Meg and Joyce.’
‘Oh, yes, it gives you a free hand,’ said Richard. ‘They are his sisters, and your second – or is it third cousins. But he gives you a perfectly free hand with them. You can pay their school bills, and have them in the holidays, and have all the burden and sweat of bringing them up, whilst he goes off into the blue and enjoys himself!’
But Jenny was laughing.
‘Oh, Richard, I’ll love it – I really will.’
He said, ‘I’m angry!’ and he looked it.
‘Oh, don’t be, darling! Don’t you see it’ll be just perfect? Caroline was saying only this morning that she’d hate to give them up. And there would be room for them in her house – she said that too.’
‘Here, what have you been planning?’
‘We’re going to be a family,’ said Jenny. ‘Caroline agreed with me about it. The little girls can go to school, and we’ll be all together in the holidays. At least—’
‘And what happens to us?’
‘I suppose we get married,’ said Jenny.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Miss Silver Mysteries
ONE
SHE LOOKED INTO the dead unbroken dark and had neither memory nor thought. She was not conscious of where she was, or of how she had come there. She was not conscious of anything except the darkness. She did not know if time had passed. There seemed to be no sense that it went by, but it must have done, because the moment when she knew nothing except the darkness had changed into a moment in which she knew that her feet were on stone, and that she must not move from where she stood.
A gradual knowledge invaded her, and with it a fear that was like the beginning of pain. She did not know how the knowledge came to her. She only knew that it was there. The stone under her feet was a step. It was a single step in a long stone flight. If she were to move she might fall, she did not know how far. The thought terrified her. It came to her, she did not know how, that it was not the unknown depth that was the terror behind her thought, but the thing that waited there. Her heart knocked and her knees shook. Whatever happened, she must not fall. Every instinct told her that. She felt behind her and found a step above the one upon which she stood. The darkness round her had begun to break into fiery sparks as she sank down and leaned forward with her head between her knees. Afterwards she was to think how strange it was that she should remember the right thing to do if you thought you were going to faint.
Presently the fiery sparks died out and the darkness was quite dark again. She put down her hand and felt the step on which she was sitting. It was cold and damp – and it was stone, just as she had known that it would be. Moving along it her hand touched something else. The warmer, drier feel of leather or plastic came to her. The thing moved with the movement of her hand. It was a handbag. She drew it towards her, set it in her lap, and felt for the clasp. It had an unfamiliar feeling. You ought to know how to open your own bag, but it felt strange – her fingers fumbled with it.
And then all at once the clasp moved and the bag was open. She slipped her hand inside it and felt the smooth, cool shape of the pocket-torch – felt it and let go of it again.
Of course she must have dropped her bag when she came down the steps. She had come down the steps with her bag, and she had dropped it. Why had she come down the steps? She didn’t know, any more than she knew who she was, or where this place might be. There was only one thing she did know, and that was that someone was lying dead at the bottom of the steps.
She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did know it, just as she knew with a sharp and terrible convict
ion that she must get away quickly, quickly, whilst she could. She got to her feet, when something halted the panic impulse. It was like a voice speaking in her mind. It said quite definitely, clearly, and soberly, ‘You can’t just run away and not see whether there is anything you can do.’
She remembered the torch, and was afraid. There was a dead girl lying at the foot of these stone steps. She knew it with the same ultimate certainty with which she knew that she was there herself, and she knew that she couldn’t just go away and leave her without looking with her eyes to back up that certainty. She took the torch out of the bag and switched it on. The small wavering beam cut the darkness and showed her what she had known she would see. She had known it because she had seen it before. She had stood as she was standing now, but the beam had been brighter then. It had come from a larger torch. She looked along this narrower, feebler beam and saw the girl lie there where she had pitched forward at the foot of the steps. She had been going down them, and she had been shot from behind. She lay with her hands stretched out and a dreadful wound in her head.
The girl on the steps went down the last six. She went round the body, keeping the light away from the head. She bent down and took hold of one of those outflung wrists. It was cold, and it was beginning to be stiff. There was no pulse. She straightened up and turned with the torch in her hand.
The place was a cellar, quite bare, quite empty. The light picked up splinters of glass. There was a broken torch that lay against the right side of the dead girl’s body. It came to her that it was the stronger torch which she had used on the other side of the black wall past which she could not go. She had used it, and she had dropped it, and it had rolled and come to rest beside the poor broken girl at the foot of the steps.
She turned now and went to the steps. There was nothing she could do, no help or comfort she could give. She must get away. She went up two steps, and then fear came on her. The lighted torch was in her hand. She switched it off and waited for her heart to stop knocking against her side. It took a long time to steady down. When at last it was going at a slower and more even pace, she opened her eyes again and saw very dimly the rising steps that were there in front of her and the shape of the doorway through which she must have come, a dimly lighted shape high up in a wall of darkness.
She began to walk up the steps towards the open door. She was conscious of two things only. They were on different levels of consciousness. One of them was the torch. It was in the bag again – she must have put it there. Her consciousness would not let go of it. She could feel the shape of it still in her hand, but it wasn’t there any longer. The bag was there. The other thing was on a different plane. She must get away. That was the flooding necessity. It struck her like one of those big waves which hit you when you are bathing in the sea and knock you down and break over you. When she looked back she could not really remember how she got out of the house, only that it wasn’t quite dark in the hall, and that the door – the front door – wasn’t latched. Her full consciousness, her memory, came back to the moment when she found herself standing at the end of the road and looking at the traffic that went by.
TWO
SHE SAT IN the bus. It was full of people, but she did not really see them. They were there, but she felt herself separate from them – apart. It was as if she was in one story and they in another, as if the stories had nothing to do with one another, as if there was something like a sheet of glass between them and her, between her consciousness and theirs, and no communication was possible.
There was money in her purse. When the conductor came round she took out a two-shilling bit and paid her fare. The curious thing was that when she was getting the money out she had no idea how much to give, and then quite suddenly she did know, so that what had begun as a vague adventure slipped over into a mechanical action too accustomed to need conscious thought.
When the bus stopped at the station she got out and looked about her. There ought to be luggage. She was going on a journey, and you don’t do that without luggage. It puzzled her, because just for a moment she could see her luggage – a trunk and a hat-box. She could see them quite clearly, but when she tried to see the name on them the whole thing went. She shut her eyes for a moment against the dizziness which followed. When she opened them it was all gone. She wasn’t sure about anything any more.
Someone touched her on the arm. A very kind voice said, ‘Are you all right?’
She turned and looked round on the little lady who was exactly like the governesses you read about in Victorian and early Edwardian books, quite out of date and tremendously reassuring. No one who looked like that could have any connection with a dark, secret, underground crime. She found herself smiling. She heard herself say, ‘Oh, yes, I’m all right, thank you.’
She did not, of course, know that her smile was the most heartbreaking thing in the world, any more than she knew that there was no colour at all in her face.
Miss Silver looked at her with concern. It was not in her to go on her way and leave a fellow creature to chance. The girl looked as if she might faint at any moment. She had the unrecollected air of one who has had a terrible shock, and who has not yet come to terms with it. She put out a hand and touched the girl’s arm again.
‘Will you have a cup of tea with me, my dear?’
The pale lips moved. She said, ‘Thank you,’ with something heartfelt in her tone. The hand that had touched her was slipped inside her arm. There was one more look round for the luggage that wasn’t there, and then with a most curious feeling of relief she was going through the arch with Miss Silver. They came into a cross-stream of traffic which made her feel shaken and giddy. Then in a vague unthinking way she was turning to her companion, and this vague and instinctive movement was at once met with a most practical and efficient kindness. Her cold ungloved hand was taken. She felt the presence of a sustaining kindness, and for the moment needed nothing more. She was aware of guidance. Her eyes dropped from the rush and hurry of the crowd they were passing through. And then all at once a glass-topped door was opened and shut again, the noise of the hurry and rush was left outside. It was as if she had passed into another state of being, one in which there was kindness and protection, she did not know from what. She only knew that it was warm, and that she was safe. She sat down with her back to the wall, and there was an interval. Then the little lady’s voice again, ‘Drink your tea, my dear, while it is hot.’
She opened her eyes. There was a cup of tea, and as soon as she saw it she knew that she was faint from long abstinence. She put out her hand to the cup, lifted it, and drank. The tea was very milky. She drained the cup and set it down, her eyes open now and seeing. They saw the crowded room and the little lady sitting opposite to her and pouring out tea. She had small, neat features and the sort of old-fashioned clothes that were not so much dowdy as characteristic. She had on a black coat and a black hat with a trail of red roses on one side and a row of little black poofs of net on the other. The little black poofs began quite big at the back of the hat and got smaller all the way until they reached the front, where they met the last red bud of the trail of roses.
Miss Silver smiled and filled her cup. When she had done this without hurry she lifted a plate of cakes and held them out. The girl looked at them, looked at Miss Silver, put out a hand, came near to touching a cake, and paused there, her eyes fixed on Miss Silver’s face. She heard her voice say, ‘I don’t know – what money – I have—’
The little lady straightened herself. She smiled.
‘You are having tea with me, my dear.’
She took the nearest bun. She knew an animal hunger. She wanted to cram it into her mouth. She took the bun and lifted it slowly to her lips. Her hand shook. The worst was when the food was at her lips. She had to take a moment then to control the dreadful animal impulse. When she had mastered it she took the food and ate it slowly, delicately. A feeling of confidence came to her. She ate the rest of the bun, and she drank about half the tea.
The little lady’s hand offered the plate again. This time it was not such a struggle.
When she had eaten three buns and had two cups of the warm milky tea she felt better. It crossed her mind then to wonder when she had eaten last. She couldn’t remember – she couldn’t remember at all.
She stopped trying to remember. It wasn’t any good. When she looked back it was like looking into a thick blinding fog. She couldn’t see anything at all. She couldn’t see past the moment when she stood on the cellar steps in the dark and strained her eyes. A shudder went over her, and with the shudder she moved.
Miss Silver said in a quiet, kind voice, ‘What is it, my dear?’
She could hear the beginnings of panic in her own voice as she said, ‘I don’t know—’
‘Your name – is that it?’
She gave a little frightened nod.
‘I don’t know – who I am—’
‘Have you looked in your bag?’ Miss Silver’s eyes were on her, kind and steady.
‘No. I took some money out for the bus—’
‘Yes, I saw you do that.’
‘I took it out, but – I can’t remember—’
‘Suppose you look and see.’
‘Yes, I could do that, couldn’t I?’
She put a hand on the bag to open it and then stopped, she could not have said why. Afterwards when she looked back she remembered that moment – her hand on the bag ready to open it, and something that stopped her. It was there, and then it was gone again and she didn’t know why it had come. Her hand resumed its interrupted motion and the bag was opened.
She looked down into it. It was a black bag with a grey lining. It didn’t feel as if it was hers. It was a new bag. There was a handkerchief in it, and a mirror. She thought that she had seen them before. And then, quickly on that, ‘Oh, but I have – I must have – because I paid the fare on the bus.’ The thought came and was gone again. The bag had a middle partition. She opened it and looked down at the money. On one side there were a lot of notes. On the other side there was change. She heard herself say in a dazed sort of voice, ‘I’ve got quite a lot of money – quite a lot—’
The Alington Inheritance (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 31) Page 25