“Nevertheless, I warn you to bridle your tongue. The Lord has given me authority in this place.” Daniel Durdle suddenly pointed his finger in a comminatory gesture. “I say unto you, beware! We shall not suffer the stranger within our gates to set a pitfall for the Elect.”
The extraordinary thing, thought Nigel, is that behind this rigmarole there is a formidable power. The man was possessed, if only by the delusion of his own sanctification. One could imagine that resonant voice and eerie personality whipping up superstitious villagers to a witch-hunt.
“If any man stands in my way, I will crush him as I crush this flower.” Daniel ground a buttercup into the earth beneath his heel.
“Oh, come, the poor flower hadn’t done you any harm.”
“Nature is evil,” exclaimed Durdle with singular intensity. “Its beauties are the snares of the Adversary.”
“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I am to warn you, also, against the woman, Rosebay Chantmerle.”
“Do you suggest she was lying when she told me you had blackmailed her?”
“I did but seek my own portion.”
“Oh, I see. Your father’s money. But it isn’t. Edric Chantmerle was pretty well broke when he died. Surely you know that?”
“Not my father’s money?” Daniel exclaimed, in evident surprise.
“You’ve just been bleeding a girl of her own savings, by using threats. And you have the contemptible hypocrisy to call that ‘the Lord’s business.’”
Durdle’s lank-haired head, under the black hat, wriggled on the long neck. There was still foam at the corners of his mouth; but he looked like a man on the defensive now, not a minor prophet in the full tide of denunciation. He said sullenly: “I did not employ the monies for the lusts of the flesh.”
“I’m quite prepared to believe that you donated it all to your chapel, and kidded yourself you were spoiling the Egyptians. But it remains blackmail. You’ve used this money to buy yourself greater power in your own community. Vindictiveness, and lust for power—those are your ruling motives. And they’ve led you into more than blackmail, as you damn well know.” Nigel’s pale blue eyes gazed freezingly at Durdle.
“I am innocent of the attempt upon Miss Chantmerle,” said Durdle, licking his lips.
“That’s not what I was referring to. But what proof can you give me?”
Durdle came out with a scurry of words. He had gone up to the Little Manor that night, he swore, in response to a note from Rosebay Chantmerle. He had destroyed the note—not unnaturally, for it mentioned a further payment of hush money. Rosebay had failed to turn up at the rendezvous on the edge of the little wood behind the house, and after waiting for twenty minutes, Daniel had returned home.
If this statement was true, it bore out the Inspector’s theory only too convincingly. But Durdle might well be lying.
“That’s no proof of anything. How do I know you’re not making it up to save your own skin?”
“Ask the woman Rosebay.” Durdle’s spectacles dully glinted, as with a blindworm writhing he pushed his head closer to Nigel’s. “And ask her this too. What did she mean by ‘It hasn’t worked’?”
“What are you talking about?”
Durdle’s mouth was set in a complacent, gloating expression, which Nigel found inexpressibly repugnant.
“Just now, while I was in Mr. Blick’s workshop, the telephone rang. He has an extension there, you know. I happened to be standing close beside him. ‘Hallo, Bay,’ he said. And I heard her voice say, before he could warn her: ‘Stanford, it hasn’t worked.’ How do you like that, Mister Detective Strangeways?”
The note of triumph in the man’s voice was obscene.
“I’ll look into it.” Nigel went on hotly: “You’ve warned me to bridle my tongue, and you’ve warned me against Miss Rosebay Chantmerle. Now it’s my turn to issue a warning. And I’m telling you that, when the village discovers who wrote those poison-pen letters, there’ll be a lynching.”
Nigel turned on his heel and walked away through the sunlit paddock, leaving the tall, black figure of Daniel Durdle motionless and silent, like some weird African ju-ju, in the flowering grass. Nigel was already regretting those words, spoken at the heat of the moment. He was to regret them a great deal more, before many days had passed.
9 The Sister’s Discovery
STANFORD BLICK WAS in his “den,” a quart flagon of cider and a plate of bread and cheese beside him, when Nigel entered.
“Hallo, old top. Hot on the trail? You look rather hot and bothered, I must say. Have a drop of auntie’s ruin.”
He poured some cider into a tooth-glass which he had found, after some searching, in a drawer of the desk.
“Yes,” said Nigel; “I’ve just been talking to Durdle.”
“And what did the dear fellow have to say?”
“Among other things, he warned me against Rosebay and told me of a telephone conversation he overheard this morning.”
Stanford carefully brushed some crumbs off the drawing board in front of him, then turned his beaming brown eyes on Nigel.
“Aha!” he chuckled. “Mad scientist unmasked, eh?”
“What did she mean by ‘It hasn’t worked’?”
“Not what you think,” replied Stanford, gleefully rubbing his grubby hands together.
“And what do you think I think?”
“How jolly this is! Just like one of those horrible games on the Light Program. You think she was referring to the lark with the field glasses—telling her accomplice that the dastardly engine had failed to puncture her sister’s blue orbs.” He waved aside Nigel’s protest. “To which I reply: (a) little Bay wouldn’t have rung up, a day after the event, to tell me something she must’ve known I knew, and (b) she’d hardly have bawled it out on the old blower without first making sure that the second murderer was alone.”
He took another huge mouthful of bread and cheese.
“What was she talking about, then?” Nigel pursued.
Stanford was only too ready to explain. Rosebay had come over to the Hall before dinner yesterday. She wanted to see Charles, but Charles was out for a walk. So she talked to Stanford instead. She was in a state about Charles’s indecision, his refusal to come clean with Celandine over his love for Rosebay. Stanford had advised her that she should confront Charles, when he called at the Little Manor next morning to inquire after Celandine on his way to Moreford, and tell him he must make a choice or she could not go on seeing him. Since Celandine had been so little affected by the field glasses, her health could surely stand the minor shock of learning that Charles wanted to marry her sister.
“It wouldn’t have been a shock,” said Nigel. “She made that clear enough to Mark Raynham and myself yesterday.”
“Well, Bay and Charles were not to know that. Bay only saw her sister at dinner, then she had to go out to a village do. And Charles didn’t see Dinny this morning—just left a message for her. Anyway, he didn’t give a positive reaction to Bay’s ultimatum. That’s what she meant when she said our little scheme hadn’t worked.”
Stanford’s spaniel-brown eyes sat up and begged. The story may be true, thought Nigel; and if it isn’t, there’ll be enough truth in it to fit any facts I can check.
“You’re an impossible lot round here,” he said. “Rosebay pays through the nose for her sister’s peace of mind. Charles is so riddled with conscience over Celandine that he’s driving himself into a nervous breakdown. And you—where do you come in? Are you another of the Friends of Celandine Society? I expect it was you who arranged about the Chantmerles’ income. Everyone falling over themselves to protect Celandine from the faintest draught of reality. Why?”
Stanford watched him soberly. The quizzical note was gone from his voice when he spoke. “Some of us have a guilty conscience about her. And Bay does it because she’s Bay. That’s a good girl, you know.”
“Does your father know it?”
The little leprechaun of a man shrugged, the
n laid his finger to the side of his nose. “You must enlighten him. He’d never believe us.”
“I’m paid to investigate anonymous letters, not to straighten out family problems. Which reminds me, it’s time I sent him a report.”
“Pop? No need, old scout. He’s coming tomorrow for the week end.”
“Is he? Why?”
“Oh, just to give Chas a pep talk, and tell me I mustn’t waste any more of the Blick fortune on playing with motor cars, I expect. An austere man, Pop.”
Soon after, Nigel took his leave. He walked down the tree-lined drive and came out through the stone gateposts into the road. Here he turned right, wanting a little walk before going back to The Sweet Drop for lunch. As he moved along, deep in thought, he heard a whirring noise close behind him. For a petrifying instant, he thought he was about to be transfixed by an arrow. Then, before he could look round or jump aside, Celandine Chantmerle’s electric invalid carriage caught him up.
“That’s a remarkably quiet conveyance of yours. I never heard you till you were right behind me.”
“I’m just taking my morning constitutional.” Celandine smiled ravishingly at him. “And thank God for someone who doesn’t tell me I ought to be in bed.”
“Certainly not. You look as fresh as Primavera.”
“What a sweet thing to say, Nigel. May I call you Nigel? I feel as if you were an old family friend already.”
“I’d love you to. We’ve hardly met properly yet, but I seem to know you quite well. Mark Raynham and Joe Summers and everyone have been so full of your praises.”
“You’ve made quite an impression on the village, I can tell you. It’s not every day they have a detective gentleman from London in their midst. I saw some children imitating your walk just now. There’s fame for you.”
They went half a mile along the undulating road, Nigel walking beside the electric carriage. Then Celandine steered it into a copse, where Nigel lifted her out and they sat on a rug beneath the whispering trees, among wildflowers, primroses and bluebell shoots.
“My father often came here,” she said. “He knew every inch of the county as a blind man knows his own room. You’ve never seen the spring till you’ve met it in Dorset, he used to say. When he was in France, in the 1914 war, my mother used to send him the first of each spring flower she found, pressed, in her letters.”
Celandine stretched her arms above her head, sighing. Some small animal rustled through the undergrowth, and a wood pigeon exploded out of a tree overhead.
“So peaceful,” she said. “On a day like this, I just can’t take anything very seriously, from poison-pen letters to atom bombs! D’you think I’m terribly selfish?”
“I think you’re very sensible. What’s the use of brooding about things one can’t remedy?”
“But I am a selfish woman. I’ve been spoiled and cosseted and generally had my character ruined by kindness, ever since.” She gestured at her helpless legs, spread out straight and woodenly in front of her like a doll’s.
“You’ll be able to walk again, perhaps, one day. It does happen.”
“Mark tells me I only need faith. Take up thy bed and walk. Well, faith is something I haven’t got. Not that kind, anyway. So I go on being a decorative burden all round. However, possibly they also serve who only sit and are waited on.”
Nigel laughed. “You don’t strike me as in need of any bracing sermons about self-help.”
“Oh, I put up a front. Anything to ward off the well-meant arrows of pity.” Her profile held for a moment the purity and hardness of an Artemis. “Pity! I’ve watched it corroding everyone round me—Bay, Charles, Mark. That’s why I’ve turned myself into a little stainless-steel marvel. Sheer self-defense.” Her expression changed. “Bay ought to go away for a bit. She’s started dreaming again.”
“Oh?”
“Last night she dreamed she heard footsteps in my father’s room. He used to get up and move about sometimes, at night, during his last illness. She was a little girl then, and slept in the room beneath, and it frightened her. When she had a breakdown a few years ago, it started with the same dreams.”
“You mean, they caused the breakdown?”
“Oh, no. That was overwork. We had no staff for the last year or two of the war, and she had to do all the work. She’s always been a bit nervy, you know, since she saw—saw my father’s body in the quarry. It didn’t do either of us any good, as you may imagine.”
“Do you think she inherited some sort of mental instability from him?”
“Good gracious, no!” Celandine replied very quickly. “He was as sane as you or me, till the thing happened that killed him.” Her eyes, cornflower blue in the shadow of the copse, regarded Nigel curiously. “You’ve not got it into your head that she might have had anything to do with these letters?”
“No, no. She couldn’t have written them.”
“You quite alarmed me for a moment. But I do wish you’d see her, and persuade her to take a little holiday. We’ve got relations she could go to. And I can manage perfectly all right by myself, though she’ll never believe it, bless her heart.”
“I’ll come up this afternoon.”
“You are good and kind. Now dump me back in my machine. It’s nearly lunchtime. . . .”
“Your sister thinks you ought to go away for a holiday.”
“Oh? Why?” said Rosebay Chantmerle ungraciously.
They were sitting in her room that afternoon—a small room on the first floor, facing west, furnished with a miscellany of objects which had been put there, Nigel suspected, not by Rosebay’s taste, but because they were unwanted in the other rooms. Her tastes, or her phantasies, could best be seen in the bookshelf beside the divan-bed, filled with volumes about the theater and the ballet, and in a few signed press photographs of minor theatrical celebrities pasted on the wall above a cramped-looking imitation-oak bureau. There was something pathetic, little-girlish about the room. It was a haunted room, too—haunted by the fettered ambitions of the fiery, sullen creature who now said to Nigel again, impatiently:
“Well? Why?”
“She told me you need a change—been having bad dreams. Is that so? I’m sorry.”
“Oh, dreams! I’ve always had them.”
“Why not turn them into realities?” said Nigel, catching her meaning, and glancing at the bookshelf. “Why not go away altogether?”
“That’s just what a man would say. As if one could pack up and go at any minute. Besides, I’m too old now.”
Rosebay was looking out of the window, seeing something far beyond the treetops outside. There was a little pause.
“Well, what about the bad dream? Last night?” asked Nigel.
“Oh, it was the usual. Father’s room was above this—a long room converted out of the attics. I used to hear him walking up and down the length of it—I was very small then—that time when he was ill. Sort of slurring footsteps. He’d struggled out of bed. I still dream I’m hearing them sometimes.”
“You’re sure it was a dream last night?”
Rosebay’s green eyes opened wide, as she turned abruptly from the window. “Sure? Whatever do you mean? Of course it was a dream. You’re not suggesting it was his ghost, are you?”
“What time did you have this dream?”
The girl gave him one of her angry, challenging looks. “Do you think I’ve made it all up?”
“No. And I don’t believe in ghosts, either.”
Rosebay’s expression changed. A faint apprehension dawned in her eyes. Gesturing brusquely, as if to sweep it away, she said: “Twenty to two. I remember howling and whinnying in my nightmare, like I do. I woke myself up, just at the point where I was dreaming that father’s door was opening and his footsteps coming downstairs. I looked at my watch, and it was twenty to two. Then I heard Dinny calling out to ask if I was all right: she sleeps in the room beneath this one, you see. So it couldn’t have been a ghost.”
“It’s a recurrent dream? Always exactly
the same?”
“Yes. No—it’s the first time I’ve dreamed that horrible bit at the end.” Rosebay shuddered reminiscently. “But if Dinny thinks I’m in for another nervous breakdown, she’s just being silly.”
“You’d been overworking, that time?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing else to it?” asked Nigel gently.
“No. What else should there be?” said Rosebay, with an aggressive inflection.
“Did you tell Charles about it this morning?”
“Of course not. Why should I? I had other things to talk to him about. Private things . . . Oh, well, I don’t mind telling you. We’ve been sort of engaged, secretly. And I told him it was about time we came out into the open.”
So that’s that, thought Nigel. He said: “Why did you keep it secret? You’re both old enough to make your own decisions.”
“You do ask a lot of questions. Surely you can see that for yourself. Charles is not a very strong character. He was worried there’d be opposition from his beastly old father. And I was worried about the effect on Dinny.”
“Your sister seems to be bearing up very well.”
“Bearing up? But—”
“She gave Mark Raynham and myself a pretty broad hint that she knows about you and Charles.”
The girl swung away from him suddenly, as if to hide some betraying expression. The light from the window struck upon her smoldering red hair and the habitual stoop of her shoulders, hunched by the life-long expectation, thought Nigel, of a blow about to fall.
“She doesn’t mind?”
Nigel barely caught the girl’s incredulous whisper, which had not been meant for his ears.
“I think you ought to go away,” he found himself saying. “It might clarify things for Charles—and make him see that he must make up his mind. And I don’t like you looking so unhappy.”
Rosebay turned to him again, nervously fingering the blind cord, a wondering look in her eyes.
“You don’t like? Why should you mind?” Her mouth quivered and she buried her face in her hands. “O God, if you know how lonely I’ve been all my life! . . . And whose fault is it? Nobody’s but my own. I’m a coward. That’s why I don’t go away. And I’ve never learned how to get on with people, so I make everyone feel awkward. Now you know. I can’t even believe Charles loves me. It’s—” Her voice choked on a childish sob, and she was in tears.
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