‘Now, Mrs Munn,’ Mrs Bird reproved her with some asperity. ‘Nobody here can believe she went as far as murder. Why should she? What good could her husband’s death do her? Freedom and independence? Why, Gerald Roberts, that poor girl couldn’t use freedom and independence if you handed them to her on a silver platter! That girl has to be protected and taken care of like a child, that’s all she’s really fit for.’
‘There are women who can’t abide their husbands,’ persisted poor Mr Roberts, meekly but stubbornly, like a child deprived of its bedtime story. ‘It’s a hard thing when there’s no love. Some can’t bear it. Anyway, if it wasn’t she, who could it have been?’
A slight hush momentarily overtook the company, as each person reflected on what had just been said. At that precise moment, a soft, quavering voice raised itself from an obscure corner of the room and murmured something unintelligible.
‘What’s that? What are you saying?’ said several voices. The quavering voice struck up again, a little more clearly.
‘Couldn’t it have been that strange young man?’ it said.
I raised myself on my seat to identify the speaker amongst all the eager, staring faces, and soon perceived that it belonged to a very old, white-haired lady, bent over in her chair, holding her cup of tea close to her as though to keep warm, and leaning forward onto a knotted cane. ‘What young man is that, Martha?’ asked Mrs Bird kindly. Peter leant towards me.
‘That’s old Martha,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘She’s strange; she spends all day wandering about the streets looking about her. Nobody knows what she lives on, but people invite her over for a cup of tea sometimes. She’s sharper than you’d think to see her.’
‘The dark young man with the red cloak,’ is what the quavering old voice was saying when I transferred my attention back to it. ‘I saw him on the day, on the day Mr Granger was killed, which the devil knows that he deserved. A tall young man, a quiet young man, a strange young man. He walked up the road towards the Granger woods. I saw him, and it seemed to me that I knew him, even, but I couldn’t place him.’
‘It’s true that Martha saw a strange man – I remember it!’ chimed in a voice from the other side of the room, belonging apparently to a woman called Betsey Singer. ‘I met her over in Simpson’s lane and she told me. Handsome face and gaudy clothes she said he had, and smooth seeming. But it can’t have been the very selfsame day that Mr Granger met his death now, can it?’
‘Yes, it was, to be sure,’ insisted old Martha.
‘Surely many strangers come to visit the village, don’t they?’ I asked Mrs Bird.
‘No, not too many, unless they’re someone’s family,’ she answered. ‘I didn’t see any young man myself. I don’t think he can have come into the village proper; some of the people here would have surely noticed him. He must have gone around. Still,’ she added a little wistfully, ‘I do think I remember Betsey telling me that Martha had seen something.’
‘I remember too!’ The discussion had become general now, as everybody tried to recall exactly what they might have heard or seen. ‘Yes, Betsey mentioned it to me! Didn’t you, Betsey? Now, when was it? I was at the grocer’s … buying … buying raspberries. That was it! I told you I was buying them for tea because my nephew was visiting. And you said “Is your nephew a tall, polite young man with black hair?” And I said “No, he’s a little boy of nine.” Do you remember?’
‘To be sure!’ agreed Betsey. ‘Martha had told me she’d seen such a one, and I thought it must be your visitor when you mentioned him. Now, what day would that have been?’
‘Well, it was the day my little nephew came, so it was Sunday – why yes, it was the Sunday before last, the very one!’
Dora, I won’t go on telling you the vagaries of the conversation, for I couldn’t possibly remember it; the remarks became wilder and more varied, as an ever greater number of guests came to ‘recall’ something about the mysterious gentleman. Yet as far as I could ascertain, only Martha appeared certain of having really seen him; it was in the early afternoon, and he was walking away from the village in the direction of Haverhill Manor, on that very same road from which (while coming towards the village) some witness claimed to have seen Sylvia running through the woods.
Old Martha may be the ‘strange old lady’ of Haverhill, but her testimony was perfectly clear, and it was accepted as gospel truth by the whole of the company. An idea to verify her tale formed itself in the back of my mind.
When everything had been said, repeated and speculated over that possibly could, and not a single crumb of bread or cake nor a drop of tea remained, the party began to show signs of breaking up.
‘We’d best be going, Va – Vanessa,’ said Peter, masking the last word with a grin and a mumble as he glanced around him self-consciously. ‘Otherwise, you’ll be late for supper getting back.’
I did not feel as though I should be able to eat any supper at all, but I was in a hurry to depart for reasons of my own. We exchanged warm goodbyes with all present, and above all with kind Mrs Bird, who invited us to return with great hospitality; the dear lady was simply blooming under all the attention! I wonder if her past life has not been particularly monotonous.
Peter brought round the carriage from where he had stabled it at the public house, and I climbed up onto the box beside him.
‘Peter, before we start on the road home, there is something I would like to do,’ I said. ‘That is, if you think it is a good idea,’ I added with false deference.
‘What’s that?’ he enquired with interest, eager to please.
‘It’s about that young man, the one they all said they saw. I’m thinking about Sylvia, Peter; I think she’s in trouble with the police, as they seem to suspect her, and there may be an important clue there, don’t you think?’
‘Could well be. But what can we do about it?’
‘Just this one thing. It’s little enough. Let’s stop at the nearest train station, and ask at the window if anyone remembers a young man of his description getting off the train that Sunday.’
He didn’t answer, but clucked up the horses, and we started off at a trot. He seemed to be mulling over things in his mind. After a while, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the horses’ backs, he said to me,
‘I think it would be best not to meddle.’
‘Perhaps – for other people!’ I replied hotly. ‘But we – why, we are already meddling, just by being acquainted with Sylvia! I shouldn’t leave a stone unturned if I thought it could straighten things out for her with the police.’
‘Are you such great friends, then?’ he asked, in the tone of one who does not believe a word of it. I felt faintly indignant. Indeed, I have only known Sylvia for a very few days, but there is something … she has something …
‘I’ve become dearly fond of her since I’ve been here,’ I said, ‘but even more importantly, I’m just convinced from the bottom of my heart that she’s not the murderer. I hate to see the police barking up the wrong tree after an innocent person, when they could be chasing the real criminal!’
‘Why are you so sure of that?’
‘Why, aren’t you?’
‘Well, I don’t want to speak ill of anyone.’
‘Peter!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you suspect Sylvia? You never told me!’
‘Well, no,’ he said quickly. ‘I guess I don’t really. Otherwise I’d feel funny living there, if I really thought she was a murderess. Still – there were some funny things.’
‘What funny things? Tell me at once!’
He paused to think and gather his words, as inarticulate people often do.
‘I haven’t much to tell, really. You see, it was like this: I was never particularly close to Mr Granger.’
‘Well, I can certainly understand that, after all that you told me about the stranglehold he had over your parents, that he called helping them. I should think you could never feel really close to him!’ I said.
‘Well, yes. But still, he had take
n me on as groom, which was the job I wanted, and I was making money from him, and things were all right really. And sometimes, as I drove him around here and there, he’d talk to me.’
‘He’d talk to you? About Sylvia, you mean?’
‘Well, about her and other things. He could be a hard man, I’ll say that.
‘“I’m used to winning,” he’d tell me. “I’ve spent my life struggling to get what I want, and I generally succeed. I wanted to marry Sylvia and I did it. But marriage is no joke, Peter, just remember that when you start thinking about getting hitched. The girl is pretty and the ceremony romantic, but that’s only the beginning. People forget that this is for the rest of your life. For better or for worse, that’s what we say in the marriage vows, but that’s not my way. I won’t have Sylvia for worse; it’s got to be for better. She hasn’t been what I’ve wanted her to be since we’ve been married.”
‘“She’s done nothing wrong,” I’d say, to soothe him, for nobody ever saw Sylvia doing the things husbands usually complain of – having lovers or improper friends, or spending too much money.
‘“It’s not what she does, it’s what she doesn’t do,” he’d answer. “She hasn’t learnt to want what her husband wants.” And lately, he’d been getting angry; he talked about it to me sometimes, almost as though he was talking to himself.
‘“I’ll teach her,” he’d say. “I’ve been patient up to now. I’ve been willing to say to myself that she’s too young. But I’m getting tired of it. I’ve given her an ultimatum – she’ll satisfy me or else!” It was almost scary, how he talked, Vanessa.’ (This time, my name slipped out unawares.) ‘I didn’t want to ask him questions. I didn’t feel it was my business. I didn’t want to know anything about his ultimatum. But he let fall a couple of hints. He said something about having her locked away, I don’t know what he meant. Still, though, who knows how angry she might have been against him, and what reasons she might have had?’
‘What an awful man he seems to have been,’ I said, trying to conceal the full force of my indignation and disgust. ‘Poor Sylvia! Yes, it’s easy to see that she had plenty of reason to be angry with him, perhaps even to hate him, deep down. Yet that doesn’t prove that she killed him! If every wife of a nasty husband resorted to murder, there wouldn’t necessarily be a lot of men left about, would there! Or women either, as the poor things would all be in prison.’
‘Oh, husbands aren’t all so bad,’ said Peter significantly, looking at me this time. ‘Lots are ever so nice to their wives.’ But I refused to be drawn into this topic, however interesting it may in reality be!
‘Well, I for one still believe it must have been that strange young man that old Martha saw,’ I cried, ‘and I’m determined to try to find out something!’
‘Why don’t you just tell the police inspector about it next time he comes to the house, then,’ said Peter. ‘Rushing about hunting things out for yourself, and asking questions – why, that’s not right for a lady like you!’
The young and liberated are often the most prejudiced of all, Dora, do you not find?
‘Oh, but I shan’t do that, Peter!’ I said hastily and soothingly. ‘I didn’t mean to at all – I meant you to go into the station and ask. Won’t you do it? Please? For me?’
We were nearing the very station by this time, and although I could see that he would have much preferred to avoid the whole story, Peter could not resist my calculatedly charming appeal (accompanied, I am ashamed to confess, by fluttering eyelashes).
‘You stay here and wait, then,’ he said firmly, alighting. But this suggestion taxed my tolerance too highly.
‘Oh no, I want to watch you do it!’ I cried with assumed girlishness. ‘I shall stay right away from you, I promise – I shan’t even listen. You’ll tell me what they say.’ I suspected that without my watchful eye, he might not take the job seriously, and I had no intention of allowing that.
In spite of his reticence, Peter wished to please me, so he entered the station and I followed him a short way behind, stopped in a quiet corner, and affected to be waiting. Peter sauntered up to the window, and was soon deep in conversation with the gentleman behind it. There were no other clients in sight, no trains, and only two or three other people quietly standing about, and the man seemed pleased enough at the unexpected chat. He soon called another from the room behind, and all three put their heads together. Chuckling and exclamations were to be heard, gestures were made, a timetable was even taken out and consulted. I was most grievously beset by curiosity, but forced myself to bide my time patiently.
Have you ever noticed, Dora, how men are just incapable of repeating a conversation that they have heard? Women are all past masters at the task; they want to recount the very words that were spoken, and even the intonations, the inflections and the glances that accompany them, and top it all off with a keen analysis, whereas men seem incapable of giving even the merest coherent summary. Arthur is particularly hopeless at it, but Peter, alas, was not much better; after a good quarter of an hour of conversation with the men in the station, after we climbed back up on the box together and started off on our way home, all he found to say was,
‘Yep, they saw him right enough.’
This information was enough to greatly excite my thirst for further detail!
‘Whatever did you talk about for the whole time?’ I asked coaxingly.
‘I don’t know, nothing really,’ was the foolish but typical answer. Still, by dint of much insistence, I elicited from him the fascinating information that not only did the gentlemen, who worked there every day of the week, remember a red-caped young man appearing in the station, but even that he stopped to ask for timetables to plan his return to London that same afternoon.
‘And he bought his ticket and took the return train, just as he had planned,’ ended Peter. ‘Now I think you’ve learnt what you wanted to, and had best just explain the whole thing to the police if you really care to do it – personally, I’d leave it alone, police and all, if I was you!’
Should I tell the police about it, or not? There will always be time to do so; it does not seem necessary to be hasty. On the other hand, they have a great many means to discover much more than I ever could about the mysterious young man; where he came from, where he went and so on. On the third hand, they wouldn’t tell me any of it. On the fourth hand, if he is the murderer and they discover him, then there would be no need for me to work further upon the case. I must reflect over all this. Oh, how I should like to talk it over with Arthur! I wonder if I can ask Mrs Bryce-Fortescue to let me go up to Cambridge for a day or two.
Your very own loving
Vanessa
Maidstone Hall, Thursday, June 16th, 1892
My dear sister,
It is hardly to be believed, but an extraordinary chance appears to have come my way this morning!
I was devoting myself to considering all that I had heard and learnt at Haverhill, and wondering how best to investigate this news and where to begin, and as I wandered about, deep in thought, my steps bent their way automatically to the library, perhaps in search of inspiration, or of the padded silence that reigns there.
Thanks to the thick and luxurious carpets, one can cross the room quite silently. As I did so, I suddenly became aware that I was not alone – Sylvia was fast asleep in one of the large, well-worn leather armchairs. I stood near her for a moment, watching her as her breast rose and fell quietly under her soft dress. Her arm was resting on the arm of the chair, and her hand fell over the side; her two or three bracelets had slipped down to the place where the hand widens from the wrist. One of them was a charm bracelet; a robust little silver chain with large links, from several of which depended little silver ornaments; a heart, a cross, a little bow, a tiny key.
A key! A tiny key! My heart leapt as I perceived it, as the words overheard in the dark of the night, and nearly forgotten, suddenly sprang into my mind. No one will ever find the key, Sylvia had said confidently. And indeed
, who could possibly guess where she might have hidden it, anywhere in this vast manor whose nooks and crannies she knows as no one else does? It had not even crossed my mind that she could have hidden it upon her person. But now, my eyes fixed with fascination on that carefully worked little key, I became filled with the utmost conviction that this, and no other, must be the key to the secret compartment of her jewellery box. Oh, if only I could get it without waking her! Her secret – I had thought it important, and then I had felt less certain, for it had seemed to me that Camilla seemed more fearful of some scandal than of an accusation of crime. And yet, no stone must be left unturned, and here was a golden opportunity!
I knelt by the armchair, and examined the bracelet. The clasp was a simple one, to be pressed and pulled open, and it hung down free from her wrist. My heart pounding with fear so that I was afraid it must be audible – it always does seem to do that at the most inconvenient moments! – I reached out to touch it, and then, stiffening my hands to control their trembling, I took it between the tips of my fingers and pulled it apart with a gentle, steady little movement. The bracelet hung open now. I stood up, trying to calm the rushing in my ears, and took a few steps away from Sylvia, standing behind the chair where she could not see me if she opened her eyes. I was too afraid to wake her by slipping the hanging chain away from her limp arm, and remained wondering how I could obtain the key, when quite naturally, she sighed in her sleep and stirred. She shifted her arm, throwing it across her lap, and as she did so, the open bracelet slipped and fell off onto the thickly piled Persian carpet. I darted forward silently, snatched it up, backed away precipitately and waited to see if she would awake and perceive the lack. But she did not, and I left the library on cat’s paws, my heart wilder than ever, feeling like a thief and a criminal.
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