The Listening Eye

by Patricia Wentworth

  Lucius Bellingdon broke in upon these reminiscences.

  “Well, whatever it was, he was wrong, and getting on for fifty years out of date. What is the matter with Arnold anyhow?”

  Miss Bray removed the handkerchief from her brimming eyes and repeated her previous remark.

  “He needs care.” Then, with rapid inconsequence, “I could put him in poor Arthur’s room. His things have all been cleared out of it, and it wouldn’t take long to air the bed-a couple of hot water bottles and a fire. And you really needn’t see him except at meals.”

  She had the kind of clinging pertinacity which is more exasperating than heated opposition. Lily had been like that too. He said,

  “Oh, he’ll be well enough to come down to meals, will he?”

  The tears began to run down Elaine’s face. When she cried like that she brought Lily back to him with painful clarity. Lily had always cried when he wouldn’t do something she wanted him to do. She hadn’t wanted him to go out to the States, and she had cried almost without ceasing until the moment of his departure. And when he came back and he found that she had taken upon herself to acquire a strange baby in his absence, she had cried again and gone on crying until he had given way and said that Moira could be kept. It was all very much as if she had been a puppy or a kitten, but because Lily had done the thing behind his back, and because he had given way against his will and his judgment, a cold deep resentment had put paid to what remained of their relationship. He did not like to be reminded of these things. When Elaine cried he was reminded of them. There was no real likeness to Lily, it was just that they cried in the same way. Against all reason it made him feel that he was being a brute. He bent a portentous frown upon Lily’s cousin and said,

  “For any sake stop crying! If Arnold really isn’t well he can come here for a bit, but it’s no use either of you thinking he can make a habit of it.”

  The flow of tears stopped abruptly. There were sniffings, there were dabbings, there was a gush of sentiment.

  “So kind-I’m sure I don’t know what we should all do without you. He will be so grateful. I’m sure if you were our own relation instead of just dear Lily’s husband we couldn’t be more grateful. In fact very few people’s relations are so generous and so kind.”

  He removed himself, and she was presently talking to Arnold Bray ringing up from the station call-box. In reply to his “Is it all right?” she gave twittering assurances that it was.

  “Only I think perhaps you had better keep out of his way as much as you can. He thinks you ought to have made the money go farther… Oh, you’ve got some of it left? I must tell him that. I wish I had known… Oh, you don’t want me to? Really, Arnold, I can’t see why, when it would please him… Oh, I see. But I don’t think there’s much chance of your getting any more… Oh, Arnold, I don’t think you ought to say that! I wouldn’t call him mean-I wouldn’t really. If he hadn’t been careful about money, I don’t suppose he’d have had such a lot of it. Anyhow he says you can come, and I’m putting you in Arthur’s room… Why? Because we’re really full. These week-end people seem to be staying on. David Moray is going to do a portrait of Moira, and Sally Foster has got a holiday-at least it’s not really a holiday, but the woman she works for rang her up and said she was going over to Paris for a week and Sally could have the time off. I don’t suppose she’d have said anything about it, only she was taking the call in the hall and Lucius heard her say, ‘Then you won’t be wanting me for a week,’ and he asked her to stay on. So you see, I don’t know how many of the rooms will go on being full, or for how long. And it’s all very well, but one has to consider things like sheets and towels, because there’s nothing wears them out like constant use-only men never think of things like that, and Lucius is worse than most of them through being a widower for so long.” It was at this point that Arnold Bray stopped trying to get a word in edgeways and rang off.

  Chapter 26

  IT being Sunday morning, Miss Silver attended the village church. She was gratified by the company of Mr. Bellingdon and Mrs. Scott, and discovered Annabel to be the possessor of a particularly sweet singing voice. She had an affection for these small village churches with their air of having grown up with the place and their mementoes of its past history. This one contained quite an elaborate memorial of the Merefield family, now extinct, in the form of a wall sculpture of Sir Lucas de Merefield and his wife Philippa. They kneeled facing each other in stone, he in armour, and she in robe and wimple with five daughters behind her puppet-small, and five boys behind him, all with bent heads and folded hands. It seemed strange that so prolific a family should have died out, but Miss Silver had remarked the same phenomenon in her own time-the overlarge family of one generation becoming diminished or even extinguished in the next. Of course, in the case of the Merefields a great many generations had passed since Lucas and Philippa had produced their family of ten. She remembered to have heard that the last Merefield, another Philippa, had died in extreme old age at about the time of the first world war. Dismissing these thoughts as unsuitable to the occasion, she turned her mind to higher things.

  A middle-aged woman in a hat which resembled Miss Silver’s own wrestled with a voluntary beyond her skill. Glimpses of her profile crimsoned with exertion were afforded by a curtain which must always have been skimpy and had recently lost a hook. The music stopped, Annabel Scott relaxed, and an old man with a kind voice began the Order of Morning Prayer:

  “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.”

  It came into Miss Silver’s mind that there is always a place for returning and repentance.

  The rest of the party did not go to church. Sally had meant to, but when it came to the point it was beyond her. There was something about the way Moira looked at her and said, “I suppose you’ll go to church,” that made her say, “Oh, no”-just like that. She hadn’t meant to say it, but once it was said she wasn’t going to go back on it. And in the end she might as well have gone, because Moira disappeared and David disappeared, and Wilfrid trailed about after her behaving more like a gadfly than you would think any human creature could. She told him so, and felt that she couldn’t have pleased him more. Nothing happened for the rest of the day except acres of exasperation and dullness. She hadn’t been pleased with herself to start with, and by the evening she never wanted to see herself again. David remained absent, Moira remained absent. Miss Bray looked as if she had been crying. Her brother Arnold arrived just before lunch on a bicycle with a suit-case. From the brief contact which Sally had had with him it seemed unlikely that he would have an enlivening effect upon his surroundings. One Miss Bray was enough for any house, and Arnold was quite distressingly like his sister-the same fair indeterminate colouring, the same trickle of talk which seemed to have neither starting-point nor stopping-place. There were differences of course. To do Elaine justice, she didn’t look shifty, and Arnold did. Fortunately, he retired to his room almost at once, and Elaine said he was resting.

  Sally was at a loose end. Miss Silver conversed with Elaine. Lucius and Annabel had gone out in his car and had driven away into the blue. Wilfrid continued to cling, and she could have murdered him. If he had been silent it wouldn’t have been so bad. But Wilfrid was never silent.

  “Let us mingle our tears, darling. You are cut out, and so am I-you with David, and I with Moira. All my hopes of twenty thousand a year or whatever it’s likely to be gone down the drain! Let us weep on one another’s shoulders.”

  Sally was imprudent enough to answer him.

  “You may want to weep, but I don’t know why you should think that I do.”

  “Ah, that is my sensitive nature. The slightest pang of the beloved object and I feel it as my own.”

  “I thought it was Moira who was the beloved object.”

  “Darling, I never said so. The pang one feels on losing twenty thousand a year is of a different and
a more earthy nature. Have I ever disguised from you that I have an earthy side?”

  “No, you haven’t. It would be too difficult.”

  He blew her a languid kiss.

  “You don’t know what I can do if I try.”

  Sally said in a tone of rage,

  “I shall have a telephone call and catch the first train tomorrow! I can’t think why I said I would stay on!”

  “Darling, you wanted to keep an eye on David-it’s quite simple. By the way, I suppose you know he has gone up to town to get his painting tackle.”

  It hadn’t occurred to her. She said,

  “Has he?”

  Wilfrid nodded.

  “So as to start painting Medusa bright and early tomorrow morning. I gather Moira’s idea is to have the sittings in the North Lodge, all nice and private. It’s been empty for donkey’s years, but it used to be let to a man called Hodges who was quite a good artist, and Lucius let him build on a studio with a north light. So you see, there’s some cheese in the mousetrap.” A malicious glance flicked over her.

  Sally said another thing which she hadn’t meant to say.

  “Is it a mousetrap?”

  The words just came and there they were.

  Wilfrid raised his eyebrows.

  “Darling, be your age!”

  Sally gave him a look and ran out of the room.

  Another thing that she oughtn’t to have done. She had lived for twenty-two years with Sally Foster. They had had their ups and downs, but on the whole they had got on very well. Now, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t a good word to say for her. No proper pride, no stiff upper lip. Not even a decent try at keeping her end up. She just couldn’t have given herself away more lavishly had she set out to do it. And to Wilfrid! And the last, worst dreg of the whole thing was that she didn’t really care. If David was going to have a wretched sordid affair with Moira, what she ought to be feeling was “Well, that’s their look-out, and a good riddance to both of them!”

  She couldn’t do it, she didn’t even want to do it. Moira was poison and David was going to get hurt. Poison hurt you-it could hurt you dreadfully. She couldn’t bear David to be hurt. She stared out of the window of her room and saw that it was getting dark. There were low black clouds, very low and very black. She tied a handkerchief over her head. She wanted to get out of the house into the air, and if it poured with rain and soaked her she didn’t mind, and if there was a thunderstorm or a cloud-burst she didn’t mind. All she cared about was getting out of the house without anyone seeing her. She went out by a side door, achieved a path through a shrubbery, and experienced a slight lift of the spirits. There is something about escaping which has this effect.

  She emerged from the shrubbery on to a drive. It wasn’t the drive you went down to get to the village. Well, so much the better-she might have met anyone there. Something said, “This is the drive which goes to the North Lodge.” She countered with “I don’t know it’s the north drive, do I?” And the thing that talked came back with a “Well, you hope it is.”

  The drive, wherever it led to, showed signs of being less in use than the other one. The trees on either side of it leaned together, and the shrubberies were overgrown. Before the war there had been five gardeners at Merefields. Now there was Donald, an old man who pottered in the greenhouses, and two lads who were waiting to be called up for their military service. The drive grew narrower and the bushes thicker, and then there was the gate in front of her, and to the right of it, almost hidden by shrubs and trees, was the lodge. What she didn’t know was that it was the North Lodge. Only she was sure that it was. She pushed a little creaking gate and went up a path that was slimy with moss to a hooded door. There was a window on either side of it and the blinds were down. There was a step that felt slimy too. If the place had stood empty for donkey’s years as Wilfrid had said, it probably hadn’t been cleaned since before the war. It was dark here under the trees and getting darker. She put out a hand and touched a rusty knocker.

  And then quite suddenly there was a brilliant flash and the thunder and the rain broke together. She stood in close to the door while a curtain of water fell between her and the way she had come. The hood over the door wasn’t going to keep her from being soaked to the skin. She pressed herself as close to the door as she could and felt it give. It swung in, and everything was dark in the house. If it was empty, there wouldn’t be anyone there to make a light. If it was the North Lodge it had been empty for years. There was another flash of lightning, very bright. It showed her a narrow passage with a door on either side and one at the far end. There was some scuffed linoleum on the floor. All the doors were shut. She stepped into the passage and it was dark again.

  If this was the North Lodge it was empty, and if it was empty, why was the door left open like this? She thought about calling out to see if there was anyone there, and it wasn’t a thought she liked. It was still in her mind, when there was a third flash and the door at the end of the passage began to open.

  Chapter 27

  THE thunder crashed overhead. What the flash had disclosed was a moving door. Doors don’t move unless someone is moving them. This door was opening and someone was coming through. The lightning flared again. For a moment the place was as bright as day. She saw David Moray coming towards her, and he may have been frowning at the lightning or he may have been frowning at her, but he was certainly frowning. The frown went with her into the dark that followed the flash, and she thought that it was for her. She wondered why David should look as if he hated her. He came down the passage and spoke through the noise of the storm.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He had his hands on her shoulders and was bending down to her ear, or she would not have heard him. The rain banged on the roof over their heads. They stood there together, and there was anger between them. Sally said, stiffening the words with her anger so that they would reach him,

  “There’s a cloudburst-I suppose you haven’t noticed it.”

  The lightning lit them up again. The passage swam in the blue fire. He reached over her shoulder and pushed the door. Then he had her by the arm and was taking her down the passage. She caught bits of what he was saying. Something about not being deaf, and then,

  “Come and look at this damned place. I don’t know what to do about it.”

  They went through to the room from which he had come. It was the kitchen. There was just enough light to distinguish the wooden table and a chair or two, and the range. There was a dresser against the farther wall and linoleum on the floor. The next flash of lightning was not as vivid as the others had been, and the thunder was farther off. The kitchen led into a kind of lean-to scullery. Outside the back door there was a narrow flagged passage with the rain splashing down into it, and on the other side of the passage a large dark structure which she guessed to be the studio erected by the late Hodges. It was as nearly dark as makes no difference in the scullery, and the noise was deafening. David had her by the arm. When she realized that she was expected to walk out into the rain she stopped walking and lifted her voice against the weather.

  “No, David!”

  His voice did better than hers, for she heard his “What?” quite distinctly.

  “I’m-not-going-out-into-that-rain.”

  He must have caught some of that, because he bent right down to her ear and shouted.

  “It’s only a step! Come along!”

  And with that his arm came round her waist and she was being swung right off her feet and jumped across the passage into the open doorway on the other side.

  He was laughing when he set her down.

  “There! We’re all right now and out of the wet!”

  “I’m drenched.”

  “You can’t be-you weren’t out in it long enough. But I don’t know why you hadn’t the sense to bring a coat.”

  “I didn’t know there was going to be a storm.”

  He turned a considering eye upon her.

  �
�How did you get here anyway? You didn’t know I was going to be here.”

  “Of course I didn’t know!”

  The fury of the rain had lessened, or else the roof of this place didn’t help it to make as much noise. Suprisingly, they could hear themselves speak. The indignation in Sally’s voice didn’t seem to register. He said,

  “No, you couldn’t have known, because I didn’t know myself. It just seemed a good idea to bring my stuff straight here, so I dropped off my bus at the corner and came along. But now I’m not sure that it’s going to do.”

  Sally said, “Why?”

  They couldn’t really see each other, though it wasn’t as dark as it had been in the lodge. They were just shadows against the screen of the two big windows which looked north-a shadow David and a shadow Sally. She didn’t need a light to tell that the shadow David was frowning again. He said,

  “Well, I don’t know. The place is all right-very good light-”

  She couldn’t resist an interruption.

  “Darling, it’s practically pitch dark.”

  He resumed with vigour.

  “I’m not talking about now. I came and saw it this morning-naturally.”

  “Of course-you would! Did Moira come with you?”

  “Why shouldn’t she?”

  “No reason at all. You are going to paint her here, aren’t you?”

  His voice lost some of its vigour.

  “Well-I don’t know-”

  “You don’t know if you’re going to paint her?”

  He said angrily, “Of course I’m going to paint her! What I’m not sure about is doing it here. It’s-it’s a bit out of the way.”

  It occurred to Sally with pleasure that he was not unaware of the mousetrap of Wilfrid’s metaphor. He might want the cheese, but his Scottish caution was aroused. She said in her sweetest voice,