‘I can’t possibly. It would be madness.’
‘I must see you!’
‘You saw me last night.’
So it had been Ellie Page down there in Edna’s sitting-room at two in the morning – Ellie Page.
Ellie said on a sob,
‘You sent me away-’
‘Well, if you want to ruin us both-’
‘Oh, I don’t!’
‘Then you’ve got to be patient.’
There was another sob.
‘How long is it going on?’
He said in an exasperated tone,
‘What is the good of asking me that? If I leave Edna, Adriana will cut off supplies – she has told me so right out. Well, we can’t live on nothing, can we?’
Someone moved on Janet’s left and she stepped into the gap. That poor wretched girl – what a mess! She pushed and prodded her way up to the table and set down the tray.
Chapter Eighteen
Mabel Preston was enjoying herself. All those nice little savouries and any amount to drink. Every time she took another glass she felt more convinced that she was right on the top of her form. After the third or fourth she had no hesitation in talking to anyone. And why not, if you please? Most of the women’s clothes were not half so smart as hers. Adriana always did go to good houses, and there was one thing about black and yellow, it showed up well in a crowd. Right from the beginning she had noticed people looking at her, which made it quite easy to get into conversation and let them know who they had been looking at.
‘Mabel Prestayne. That was my stage name – I expect you’ll remember it. It’s some years since I retired – on my marriage of course. But the public doesn’t forget. Now I always think Adriana stayed on too long. I believe in being remembered at one’s best.’
She did not really notice that the people to whom she addressed these remarks had nothing very much to say to her and soon detached themselves. She continued to sip from one little glass after another and to confide more and more frankly in the total stranger. It was disappointing that the Duchess shouldn’t be here, but she heard Lady Isabel Warren announced, and she was the Duke’s sister, which would do very nearly as well to talk about afterwards. She ought perhaps to make the next drink her last. The bother was she was out of practice, and the room was so hot. She thought perhaps she would go out into the hall and cool down. It wouldn’t do if she came over queer in a crowd like this.
Meriel edged her way between two chattering groups and skirted old Lady Bontine, who took up as much room as two other people and was a great deal harder to shift. It brought her to the point she was aiming at. Ninian was simply bound to come back this way. He set down the tray he was carrying, turned, found her at his elbow, and said, ‘Hullo!’ She gave him the smile which she had spent some time practising before her looking-glass.
‘Oh, you’re back! Did you have a good time?’
‘Quite a successful one, thank you.’
‘I wish I had known you were going up. I would have come too. I have quite a lot to do in town, but I do so hate travelling alone. It would have been delightful if we could have gone together.’
‘Well, I had to meet a man, and I was a bit rushed.’
‘A friend?’
‘Oh, just a man I know.’
She tried the smile again.
‘That sounds mysterious – and interesting. Do tell me all about it! Only it’s so hot in here – couldn’t we open one of those windows behind the curtains and slip out? We could go down into the garden and sit by the pool. It would be lovely, and you could tell me all about everything. Oh, Ninian, do!’
He had begun to wonder what she was up to. There was just one thing you could always be sure of with Meriel, and that was that she was playing a part. He thought she was being the sweet and sympathetic friend, in which case her get-up was a mistake. That slinky magenta dress and the matching lipstick! Sweet sympathy flows oddly from magenta lips. Definitely the wrong note to strike. He thought what an ass she was, and he was hanged if he was going to pour confidences into her ear in a dark garden. He shook his head and said,
‘Adriana expects me to be on duty – you too, I imagine. We shall both have black marks if we don’t get on with it. I must go and pay my respects to Lady Isabel.’
Meriel stood where she was. Why should Adriana have what she wanted? They were all at her beck and call. And why? Just because she had the money. It was no use having beauty and youth and genius unless you had the money to back them up! And why should Adriana have it and go on keeping it away from everyone else! She saw Ninian laughing and talking with Lady Isabel, and thought angrily that if she wasn’t a duke’s daughter nobody would look at her twice. The anger reached her eyes as she saw Ninian move on and find his way to Janet and Stella.
Stella caught at him.
‘She says it’s my bedtime, but it isn’t. Say it isn’t!’
‘Darling, I only wish it was mine.’
‘You can go to bed instead of me. Why should I go when I don’t want to? What would Janet do if I was to scream?’
‘You had better ask her.’
Stella swung round.
‘Janet – what would you do?’
‘I don’t know.’
Stella jigged up and down.
‘Think – think quick!’
‘There’s no need to think about things that won’t happen.’
‘Why won’t they happen?’
‘Because you have too much sense. Only a very stupid person would want to be remembered for ever and ever as the child who screamed at Adriana’s party and had lemonade poured over its head.’
Stella’s eyes became immense.
‘Would you pour lemonade on me?’
‘I might, but I’m sure I shan’t have to.’
Stella looked down at a brief yellow skirt.
‘It would spoil my dress,’ she said.
Mabel Preston stared at the little group. She saw them hazily. She began to make her way towards the door.
Esmé Trent stood with her back to the room talking to Geoffrey Ford. She said,
‘Where have you been hiding yourself? I thought you were never coming near me.’
‘Oh, there are always plenty of duty people to talk to at a show like this. I have to play host for Adriana.’
‘Getting into training for doing it for yourself?’
‘My dear girl!’
She laughed.
‘No one can hear me in this uproar. It’s as good as being on a desert island. By the way, who is that ghastly Mabel creature who buttonholed me? She seems to be staying here.’
‘Mabel Preston? Oh, she’s just an old stage acquaintance of Adriana’s – a bit of a down-and-out. Adriana has her here, gives her clothes – all that kind of thing.’
Esmé Trent was explicitly profane.
‘Well, I call it cruelty to guests. The most ghastly bore I’ve ever come across, and the most ghastly sight. Like one of those wasps you find crawling about the house after there’s been a frost and it ought to have died. By the way, where is Adriana?’
He said,
‘She was over by the fireplace. Didn’t you see her? Very good stage effect – one of those carved Spanish chairs set back against greenery and chrysanthemums – other lesser chairs for the favoured few.’
‘Yes, I saw her.’ She gave a hard little laugh. ‘How she adores the limelight! But she isn’t there now.’
Geoffrey frowned.
‘It’s frightfully hot in here – she may have found it too much for her. Edna wanted me to open a window behind those curtains some time ago. I expect I had better do it.’
They began to push their way into the crowd.
They had not seen Mabel Preston between them and the door. When they moved, she managed to get it open and slip out. Esmé Trent’s words rang in her head – her false, cruel words. How could she say such dreadful wicked things? They weren’t true – they couldn’t be true! They were just spite and envy! Bu
t her head was throbbing and the tears were running down over her face and spoiling her make-up. She couldn’t go back, and she couldn’t stay here for anyone to see her like this. Someone was coming from the direction of the hall-
She began to walk the other way until she came to the end of the corridor and the glass door which led into the garden. Fresh air – that was what she wanted, and to get away quietly by herself until she had got over the insulting things that horrible woman had said. But she had better have a wrap. The black and yellow dress was only crêpe-de-chine. There was a cloakroom here by the garden door, and the very first thing she saw when she looked inside was the coat Adriana was giving her – the one that girl Meriel had made all the fuss about. But Adriana wasn’t giving it to Meriel, she was giving it to her! There it hung, with its great black and white checks and the emerald stripe which had taken her fancy. She didn’t know when she had seen anything smarter. She slipped it on and went out into the dusk.
The air felt fresh after the heated house. She walked waveringly and without conscious aim. She really had overdone those drinks. Or perhaps it was just the room being so hot and that Mrs Trent insulting her. She had asked who she was, because she looked as if she might be somebody. Mabel Preston shook her head. Smart looks aren’t everything. She wasn’t a lady. No lady would have used such an insulting expression. The words ran together into a blur. When she tried saying them aloud they sounded exactly as if she was tight. Hot room and too many drinks – never do to go back until she was all right again.
She lifted the latch of a small gate and passed into the flower-garden. Wandering on in the half light, she saw that she had come to a place where there was a pool and a seat. Nice quiet place with hedges round it. She went and sat down on the seat and shut her eyes.
It was much darker when she opened them again, and at first she didn’t know where she was. She just woke up in the dusk with the black hedges round her and a glimmer of light on the pool. It was frightening to wake like that. She got to her feet and stood for a little, remembering. It had been hot – she had had a drink too many – and that Mrs Trent had insulted her but she was all right now – she wasn’t hot any more. A shiver went over her. Silly going to sleep like that.
She moved towards the pool and stood looking down into it. Her legs felt stiff. A small bright light came flickering through an arch in the hedge. The arch was behind her and to her left. The light slid over the black and white of her coat and the emerald stripe. It startled her, but she had no time to turn or cry out.
Chapter Nineteen
The last car having gone off down the drive, Sam Bolton followed it in the direction of the lodge. He was the under gardener and he had been helping to get the cars away. He was now about the unlawful business of courting Mary Robertson with whom he had an assignation which would have been strictly forbidden by her father if he had known anything about it. Mr Robertson was head gardener, and an autocrat. His notions of parental authority might, as Mary declared, be fifty years out of date, but she wouldn’t have dared to flout them openly, and he looked higher for her than Sam, whom he admitted to be a steady, hardworking lad but ‘withoot sae much ambeetion as ye could lay on a saxpence’. He had a distressing homily which he was only too willing to deliver as to the extent to which he himself had burned the midnight oil in the pursuit of knowledge. Sam and Mary were therefore in the habit of waiting until he had departed to the White Hart for a moderate glass and a game of darts before, with the connivance of Mrs Robertson, they snatched an hour together.
He came whistling down the drive and she slipped out of the bushes to meet him. Then arm-in-arm they went back towards the house, cut through the shrubbery by a path which came out at the bottom of the lawn, and so to the gate which led into the enclosed flower-garden. Mary had brought a torch, but they knew the way too well to need it. The place might have been made for courting couples – perhaps it had. On a warm evening there were seats beside the pool, and if it was colder there was the summer-house.
They came through the arch in the hedge and saw at their feet the faint mysterious glimmer of the cloudy sky reflected from the water of the pool. There was a light air moving and the clouds moved with it – up there in the arch of the sky and here within the round of the low stone parapet. But the circle was broken by a shadow. Mary pressed closer.
‘Sam – there’s something there!’
‘Where?’ His arm had tightened.
‘There! Oh, Sam, there’s something in the pool! There’s something – oh!’
‘Give us your torch!’
She fumbled for it, her fingers shaking on the catch, and when he took it from her and a faint beam trembled on what lay across the parapet and fallen down into the water, she screamed. The light showed a black square and a white square and an emerald stripe that crossed them. To both it was a perfectly familiar sight. Sam felt his inside turn over. The torch fell out of his hand and rolled.
‘It’s Madam! Oh, my lord!’
He made a movement and Mary clutched him.
‘Don’t you touch her! Don’t you dare to touch her! Oh, Sam!’
There was stuff in Sam Bolton. He said doggedly,
‘I’m bound to get her out of the water.’
Mary went on clutching him.
‘We’ve got to get away – we don’t want anyone to see us!’
He said, ‘We can’t do that.’
She hadn’t known how strong he was. Her hold was broken and she was pushed aside. She slipped on a patch of moss and fetched up against the wooden seat, catching at it. Her foot touched the fallen torch. She picked it up, but it had gone out. The catch clicked, but whichever way she pushed it the light was dead. The word in her own mind frightened her. She stared into the darkness for Sam. He had gone down into the pool. She could just see him there, stooping, lifting, and she could hear the water running from what he lifted and a horrid soft thud as he set it down. That was when she screamed again. She hadn’t meant to – it just happened. She screamed and she ran, with the nightmare sound of her own voice and of that dripping water in her ears.
No one had locked the front door. Sam found it open when he came running and out of breath. He had held a drowned woman in his arms and he was soaking wet. His feet squelched on the floor of the hall and left great muddy tracks. He came upon Simmons carrying a tray of drinks, and said on a gasp,
‘Madam’s dead!’
Simmons stood there, ghastly. He told Mrs Simmons afterwards that he felt as if someone had hit him over the head. He heard himself say something, but he didn’t know what it was. But he heard what Sam said,
‘Madam’s dead! She’s drowned in the pool, and she’s dead!’
His hands stopped feeling the tray, and it fell, tilting first and then going down with a crash. And that brought everyone running.
Joan Cuttle with her mouth open and her eyes popping, Mrs Geoffrey with a confusion of cries and questions, Miss Meriel, Mr Geoffrey, Mr Ninian – they were all there, and all he could say was to be careful of the broken glass, and all he could do was to point at Sam who stood and dripped in the middle of the hall with his face like tallow and his big hands shaking.
Sam said his piece all over again.
‘Madam’s dead! I found her in the pool!’
And with them all standing there struck for the moment into a paralysed silence, Adriana Ford came out on the landing above and set her foot upon the stair. The light shone down on the gleaming dark red hair, on the dress of pleated grey chiffon, on the three rows of pearls which fell from throat to waist, on the diamond flower at her shoulder.
The silence broke to the sound of an approaching car. The door stood wide as Sam had left it, and there came in Star Somers in a grey travelling coat with a little winged cap on her pale gold hair. She came running, holding out her hands, her colour high and her eyes bright.
‘Darlings, I’m back! Where’s Stella? Aren’t you surprised-’ And then she checked. She looked at Sam standing there mudd
y and dripping, at Simmons with the smashed glass at his feet, at all the shocked faces and staring eyes, at Adriana high on the stair above. Her colour failed. ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong? Can’t any of you speak?’
Adriana came composedly down the stairs. It was a good entrance, and she got the last ounce out of it.
‘Sam has just been telling them he has found me drowned in the pool. Geoffrey – Ninian – don’t you think you had better go back with him and find out who it is?’
Chapter Twenty
Miss Silver, glancing at the Monday morning paper, found her eye caught by a small paragraph.
FATALITY AT FORD HOUSE
‘Playgoers of thirty years ago may remember Mabel Prestayne. Amongst other parts, she played Nerissa to the Portia of Adriana Ford, and it was at the home of this great actress that she met with the accident which has caused her death. A cocktail party was in progress, and it is surmised that she wandered into the garden in the dusk and tripped over a low parapet guarding the pool in which her body was found. She had been living in retirement for a good many years.’
Miss Silver read the paragraph twice, and permitted herself to say, ‘Dear me!’ It was now ten days since Miss Ford’s visit, but the circumstances were all quite fresh in her mind. When she presently put down the paper and took up her knitting, she did not find herself entirely able to dismiss the topic.
It was two days later when she lifted the telephone receiver and heard a deep voice say,
‘This is Mrs Smith speaking. You will remember that I wrote and afterwards telephoned and came to see you.’
Miss Silver said, ‘I remember perfectly.’ She paused slightly before adding – ‘Mrs Smith.’
‘You remember the subject of our conversation?’
‘Certainly.’
The voice hardened.
‘There has been a development. I don’t feel that I can discuss it on the telephone, but I should like you to come down here.’ There was a moment’s silence, and then, ‘As soon as possible.’
The Silent Pool Page 11