The Listening Eye

by Patricia Wentworth

  She thanked him and began to walk up the lane, wishing that her legs felt stronger and that she didn’t keep thinking about Arthur being shot.

  The thought kept coming back. It had happened in this lane, somewhere between the high road and the village. Perhaps it was just round this corner-perhaps it was round the next… She mustn’t think about where it happened. She must only think about going to see Arthur’s girl and doing her best to comfort her. She must have been terribly upset not to be able to come to the funeral. She had thought she would see her there, and she had tried to screw up her courage to ask Mr. Bellingdon how she was, but when it came to the point she couldn’t manage it. He had spoken to her very kindly after it was all over, but when it came to asking him about his daughter she couldn’t do it. For one thing, Arthur always spoke of her as Moira, but he said she had been married and he hadn’t told her what her married name was. She didn’t like to say Moira, and she didn’t like to say your daughter, so she didn’t say anything at all. Mr. Bellingdon hadn’t given his consent to there being anything between them-she knew that-so it wouldn’t have done for her to put herself forward.

  She could see the first house in the village now. She went on until she came to the open gate between the two tall pillars. Merefields looked to be a big place. There were some lovely trees. The house was quite a long way from the entrance. She would be glad to sit down and rest.

  She came out upon the gravel sweep and saw the house on one side of it, and the great band of coloured hyacinths on the other. Lovely they were, and a beautiful scent out here in the air but too heavy to have in the house. She couldn’t sit in a room with more than one or two of them, not for very long.

  Minnie Jones crossed the gravel, went up the half dozen steps to the front door, and pulled upon the wrought-iron bell. When Hilton opened the door, there she was, very small and black, with her hands clasped upon the handle of her shabby bag. She made a tentative step forward as the door swung in and said in a wavering voice,

  “I have come to see Mr. Bellingdon’s daughter. I’m afraid I don’t know her married name.”

  Hilton wasn’t quite sure of his ground. Anyone who came calling would know the name of the lady they were calling on-it stood to reason they would. If that little person didn’t know Mrs. Herne’s name, it meant that she wasn’t a caller. Of course she might be collecting for something-there were all sorts that did that. If you asked him, she didn’t look fit for it, and that was a fact. And she didn’t look like a beggar either. Something about her that made you feel she was all right-nice quiet manner-pretty way of speaking.

  Before he could say anything she was looking at him with anxious blue eyes and saying,

  “She is here, isn’t she?”

  He found himself admitting it.

  “Then I’m sure she will see me. My name is Jones-Miss Jones, and I am Arthur Hughes’ aunt, his mother’s sister. You must have known him of course.”

  Her eyes brimmed up with tears. Astonishing how blue they were in that little faded face. He hadn’t like Arthur Hughes very much. La-di-da ways and a bit too much taking himself for granted. But when all was said and done it was one thing to read about shootings in the papers, and quite another to have them happen just round the corner from your own front door, and to someone who was living in the house. He said what a shocking thing it was and showed her into the morning-room.

  She was glad enough to sit down. It wasn’t a long walk, but it doesn’t take much to tire you when your heart is heavy. Her friend Florrie Williams that she lived with hadn’t wanted her to come-said it was too much for her right on top of the shock she had had and the funeral and all. But she hadn’t felt that she could rest until she had been down to see Arthur’s girl and give her the letters. He had trusted them to her and told her to keep them safe, and now that he was gone the proper person to have them was the girl who had written them. She couldn’t rest until she had done her errand, and she had told Florrie so. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  It was a little time before the door opened and Moira Herne came in. When you have heard a lot about someone, there is always a moment in a first actual meeting when it seems as if the person whom you have only met in thought is one person, and the one who confronts you in the flesh is another. Minnie Jones had this feeling very strongly as she got out of her chair and came forward to meet Moira Herne. There was the Moira whom poor Arthur had talked about by the hour, the Moira whom he had loved and who had loved him and who must be brokenhearted at his death, and there was this girl who was coming into the room. She wore dark blue slacks and a tight scarlet jumper, and she didn’t look as if she had a heart to break. Minnie had a quick stab of conscience for that. You couldn’t judge people by how they looked. A heart didn’t show unless you wore it on your sleeve, and why should you do that?

  She put out her hand, but since there was no answering movement she let it drop again as she said,

  “I am Arthur’s aunt, my dear. His mother was my sister Gwen. I expect he has told you about me, and I have heard a great deal about you.”

  There was a blue and green rug on the morning-room floor. It would be a little over six foot wide. Minnie had the thought that it was like a stream of green and blue water flowing between them, she on the one side of it and Moira on the other. Into this thought and mingling with it, came the remembrance of the parable in the Bible about the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom and Dives was in a place of punishment, and between them there was a great gulf fixed. The thought was vague enough-it neither labelled Moira nor herself. But that the gulf was there between them was something she didn’t have to think about. It was there. From the other side of it Moira said,

  “What do you want?”

  And from her side of the gulf Minnie answered her.

  “I wanted to comfort you.”

  It was already in the past tense, because she knew now that Moira didn’t want her comfort.

  Moira stood there and stared. She said,

  “Why?”

  “For Arthur’s death.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know why you’ve come.”

  Minnie straightened herself as she would have done if she had been suddenly called upon to lift a weight. It was too heavy for her, but she had to lift it. She said in a small steady voice,

  “I brought you some things which I thought you would like to have. I thought it would comfort you to have them.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “He talked to me about you. He said you were in love with each other. He said you were going to be married.”

  “I’m afraid he was telling the tale.”

  All the way that she had come Minnie had thought about what she was going to say to the girl whom Arthur had loved and who had lost him. Now that she was here and everything was quite different from what she had thought it was going to be, she still had to say what she had planned to say. Her mind and her thought were set and she could not change them. She said,

  “There were the letters-your letters. I thought perhaps you would like to have them back.”

  That light fixed look of Moira’s changed. It had been cold enough, now it became wary. She said,

  “So that’s it, is it? My letters? What do you want for them?”

  Minnie Jones was not able to understand what was being said to her. It was like hearing something in a foreign language-there is a sound and there are words, but you don’t know what they mean. She didn’t know what Moira meant.

  She had left her black handbag on the arm of the chair. She turned round to get it now. She began to open it.

  “He kept them. I thought you would like to have them.”

  Moira crossed the blue and green rug and came to stand beside her.

  “Have you got them with you-all of them? Let me have them-they’re mine!”

  The bag was a capacious one. It held the packet of letters easily enough. There were not so very man
y of them. The affair had been a brief madness-a quick blaze up like burning straw, a rush of hot air, and then nothing but ash. No, there were not so many of the letters, but there ought to be more than this. She said so without compromise.

  “There ought to be more. Where are the rest?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He said he had burned them-he promised he would. Where are they?”

  She had been flicking over the letters in the packet. There were two missing-the really damning ones. And the photographs. She must have been mad to let him take them- quite, quite mad. If Lucy set eyes on them it would be all up with her. It was the sort of thing he was strict about, and not one penny more would she get from him. She knew that well enough. She had to have those letters back, and the photographs, no matter what it cost her. She said sharply,

  “There are two more letters, and three photographs-snapshots. He destroyed the films, but he had taken prints from them and he wouldn’t give them up. Where are they?”

  Minnie gazed at her.

  “He had a very beautiful photograph of you in evening dress.”

  “These were not in evening dress.”

  They had not, as a matter of fact, been in any kind of dress at all. She really must have been mad. She said abruptly,

  “You’ve got them of course. And if you’ve got them, you know damn well that I’ve got to have them! Stop holding out on me and come to the point! How much do you want? And you’d better be moderate, because I’m broke, and if you push me too hard, I shall just hand you over to the police. So get a move on!”

  The whole fatigue of these days since Arthur’s death seemed to be pressing down on Minnie Jones. You can take one day at a time and do your best with it, but this wasn’t one day, it was five days-Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday-and it was too much. She didn’t seem able to think properly. She heard Moira say,

  “You can be sent to prison for blackmail.”

  Once long ago when she and Gwen were girls they had been chased by a bull. Down in the country it was, and Gwen had a dress with poppies on it and a red hat, and the bull had chased them. Gwen ran, but Minnie couldn’t run. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t move. And then Gwen came running back. She had unfastened her brooch and she had it in her hand, and when Minnie didn’t move she ran the pin of the brooch right into her arm, and the next thing Minnie knew they were running together, and they got out of the field before the bull could catch them. It was an odd thing to remember all this long time afterwards, when Gwen had been dead for twenty years, but Moira saying that about prison and blackmail was like the pin of the brooch running into her arm and rousing her up to run away from the bull. Prison-blackmail-the words pricked sharply home. She said,

  “Oh!” And then, “You oughtn’t to say a thing like that-it’s not right!”

  “The letters and the photographs-where are they? Did you bring them with you?”

  She remembered then. There was the packet of letters and there was an envelope, stuck down. She didn’t know what was in it because she hadn’t opened it. It was marked “Private. Keep safe. M.H.” and she had put it in her bag just in case. And because Arthur had marked it “Keep safe” she had put it in the inside pocket, which had really been made to take a piece of looking-glass, only the glass had been broken years ago. The envelope was there now. If it had Moira’s letters in it and the photographs which she didn’t want anyone to see, of course she would give them to her. But before she did that she must open the envelope and make sure of what was in it, because Arthur had marked it “Private, keep safe.” She had the bag in her two hands, her fingers clenched hard. She moved back now until she came to a table that had books on it and coloured primroses in a glass bowl. She set down the bag on the top of the books and opened it and got out the envelope. She didn’t like opening it, because it was marked private, but she had to be sure of what was in it. Her fingers fumbled with the flap of the envelope. It was gummed down very securely.

  When Moira reached for it, she moved back quickly and put the table between them. Something in her haste must have strengthened her fingers, because the envelope tore.

  A snapshot dropped out. It went fluttering down, to lie upon the carpet and be seen for what it was. She saw it quite clearly, and so did Moira Herne. The blood came up into Minnie’s face and then went ebbing away until it was all quite gone.

  Moira picked up the snapshot and held out her hand. Minnie Jones put the envelope into it and shut the bag. She didn’t say anything, and Moira didn’t say anything. There was a little fire burning on the hearth. Moira went over and knelt there, burning the shapshots, burning the envelope and everything in it, burning the letters.

  Minnie Jones went out of the room, and across the hall, and out of the front door. She began to walk down the drive.

  Chapter 18

  THE drive went on for a little way before it turned and was out of sight of the house. All the time she was crossing the gravel sweep and walking down the open stretch of the drive Minnie Jones felt as if the house was watching her. In her own mind and in her thoughts she had been beaten and stripped and turned away. If it had happened to her body it would not have hurt her more. When she got round the corner of the drive and there were trees between her and all those staring windows it was a little better. There was some shelter, some protection, but this very fact brought with it the fuller realization of what had happened. She shrank from it, but she could not shut it out. She had seen the photograph, and she couldn’t shut it out. She had gone to take comfort to the girl whom Arthur loved and who must be breaking her heart for him, and her comfort wasn’t needed, because it wasn’t love that had been between them, it was wickedness. This girl had led Arthur into wickedness. She had been married, she wasn’t just an ignorant girl. She would know what she was doing, and she had led Arthur astray. The pain and sorrow and shame of it came down on her like a black cloud, so that she no longer knew where she was going. It was not until her feet were stumbling on rougher ground that a sense of her surroundings came back to her and she found that she had left the drive and wandered in amongst the trees and shrubs which bordered it.

  She was standing with a hand stretched out before her and resting upon the bough of a small tree. It had its first leaves about it like a green cloud. She stood there holding on to it and not knowing what to do next, because her legs were shaking and there was a weakness in them and in her whole body. If she could sit down and rest for a little, perhaps some of her strength would come back and she would be able to walk down Cranberry Lane and get on to the Ledlington bus. She mustn’t miss it- oh, no, she mustn’t miss it-or her train. Florrie would be dreadfully worried if she missed her train. Florrie hadn’t wanted her to come.

  At this point her thinking became very much confused. The bough seemed to be slipping out of her hand-everything seemed to be slipping. She had a dim sense that she was falling. And then that was gone too- everything was gone.

  Miss Silver had walked down to the village to post a letter to her niece Ethel Burkett. Having received the news that Ethel’s sister Gladys whose irresponsible conduct had been giving her family a good deal of anxiety had now returned to her home and husband, she had hastened to relieve Ethel’s mind.

  “Andrew Robinson,” she wrote, “is a man for whom I feel a great deal of respect. He does not pretend that Gladys’s conduct has not gravely displeased him, but he is prepared to overlook it and say no more about the matter. He believes her friend Mrs. Farmer to be a thoroughly bad influence, and is glad to be able to tell me that she will shortly be leaving Blackheath on a visit to her married daughter in South Africa. I can only hope that she too will have learned a lesson, and that her mischief-making proclivities will not be employed to impair the harmony of her daughter’s home.”

  The letter posted, and the evening being clear and still, Miss Silver diverged from the drive and contemplated with pleasure the green park land with which Merefields was surrounded. There were many fin
e clumps of trees coming into leaf, the ground undulated in a manner very agreeable to the eye, and a stretch of ornamental water brightened the scene.

  Amid these surroundings she strolled for a time, her thoughts dwelling with gratitude and relief upon the outcome of what had threatened to become a painful family problem. Returning through the shrubbery in the direction of the drive, she was following a narrow path set on either side with trees and bushes in their spring greenery, when her eye was attracted by something not at all in keeping with this rural beauty. It was, in fact, something of an extremely disquieting nature. What she saw was a woman’s hand in a black thread glove and a woman’s arm in a black cloth sleeve. The hand and arm lay upon the ground, and they lay very still. There was no more than that to be seen, because there was a froth of white bird cherry in the way. It was not in Miss Silver to hesitate before what might prove to be an unpleasant situation. She stepped off the path, pushed aside a blossoming bough, and saw Minnie Jones lying where she had fallen on the damp earth.

  She lay on her side, that one hand and arm stretched out as if when it was too late she had groped for something to break her fall. Her rather long black skirt was quite neatly disposed. Her shabby black hat had tilted and almost covered her face. She lay dreadfully still. Miss Silver went down on her knees, reached for the hand, and found it lax and warm. The warmth came through the black thread glove. She stripped it off and felt for the pulse in the wrist. She felt for it, but at first she could not find it. She had to shift her grasp more than once before she could feel the faint, slow beat. It was very faint indeed. Miss Silver took off the hat, took off her own scarf and laid it under the head, and considered what she had better do next. The woman was not young. The now exposed features were drawn and colourless. It was evident that assistance must be sought, but in order to summon it she must leave the poor thing alone, and this she really did not like to do.