Meriel laughed in a manner which Miss Silver found far from pleasant.
‘So next time the Clothing Club accounts are wrong we shall all know why!’
Stella swallowed three pieces of meat in rapid succession, took a hasty drink of water, and continued.
‘Mrs Lenton laughs a lot when she talks to the Vicar. He laughs a lot too. I like him. But Miss Page doesn’t laugh. She used to, but she doesn’t now.’
Janet said,
‘Tell Miss Silver about your dancing-class. You can do a foxtrot and a waltz, can’t you?’
Stella looked indignant.
‘Oh, we’re past waltzes!’
It did not escape Miss Silver that everyone was relieved, and that the conversation was not permitted to return to Ellie Page. The pudding which Simmons now brought in proving to be of special interest to Stella, she talked much less, and when she had finished Janet took her away.
Chapter Twenty-three
Down at the Vicarage the Lentons were finishing lunch. As soon as it was over it would be the Vicar’s part to stack everything together and carry it through to the pantry, where Mrs Lenton would wash and Ellie Page would dry. But when he arrived with a deftly balanced pile of plates Ellie was nowhere to be seen. His abrupt demand as to where she had got to having been met with a rather over ready ‘I’m afraid she has another of her headaches,’ he frowned at Molly and Jenny and told them to go and play in the garden.
As soon as they had gone he shut the pantry door with some force.
‘Mary, what is the matter with that girl?’
Mary Lenton was running the hot tap – a noisy business, because the pipes were old and made strange hiccuping sounds. He understood her to be repeating what he had begun to find a maddening remark.
‘She isn’t strong.’
‘Has she seen Dr Stokes?’
She turned off the tap and said,
‘Not lately. But he always says the same thing – she’s delicate and she needs care.’
‘Well, she’s getting it, isn’t she? She couldn’t have an easier job, and she scrimshanks out of half the things she ought to do to help you. Washing-up, for instance. Headache or no headache it wouldn’t hurt her to stand here and dry.’
She threw him a laughing glance over her shoulder.
‘It won’t hurt you, darling! There’s a nice dry cloth on that hook.’
He took it, but he had no answering smile for her.
‘The girl eats nothing – no wonder she has headaches. I shall talk to her.’
Mary Lenton looked round again, this time in some alarm.
‘Oh, no! Darling, you mustn’t do that – you really mustn’t!’
‘And why mustn’t I?’
‘Oh, because – John, that’s one of the old spoons, if you rub it like that it will break!’
His frown deepened.
‘Never mind about the spoon. I want to know why I mustn’t speak to Ellie.’
She said, half laughing,
‘But, darling, I do mind about the spoon. It’s one of your great-grandmother’s, and they are thin.’
‘I said why mustn’t I speak to Ellie?’
Mary Lenton stopped laughing. She caught her breath and said,
‘John, she’s unhappy.’
‘What has she got to be unhappy about?’
‘I don’t know – she doesn’t tell me. Oh, darling, don’t be stupid! What are girls generally unhappy about? I suppose it’s that, and I suppose things have gone wrong.’
‘You mean it’s some love affair?’
‘I suppose so. And it’s no good asking, because if she wanted to tell me she would, and if she doesn’t want to it would only make things worse. She’ll get over it. One does!’ She laughed again.
‘Are you going to tell me you – I don’t believe it!’
‘Of course, darling! Dozens! When I was sixteen it was a film star. I was much too fat, and I took off about a stone and a half gazing at his photograph and pining. I was thrilled! And if anyone had told me I should marry a parson and settle down in a country vicarage, I should have screamed!’
His arm came round her.
‘Are you sorry you did it? Are you? Are you?’’
‘I’m bearing up. No, John – let me go! Oh, darling, you are a fool!’
This time they both laughed.
At Ford House, Adriana having gone upstairs to rest, Miss Silver, who had declined this indulgence, put on coat, hat, and gloves and went out into the garden. The air was mild and the sun shone, but it would not have occurred to her to go out bareheaded or without the neat black woollen gloves which she considered appropriate to the country. Strolling down the lawn in the direction of the river, she observed undoubted evidence of recent flooding. It was obvious that after heavy rain such as they had had during the early part of the month the winding walk along the bank would tend to be submerged. Even now, after three days of fine weather, it was damp under foot.
She turned back towards the higher ground, and coming to a gate in the hedge which skirted the lawn, she raised the latch and found herself in a garden bright with autumn flowers. At its centre she came upon the pool. A second hedge surrounded it, with arches cut in the green. There were two seats of weathered oak, and a small summerhouse which broke the hedge. A pleasant place when the days were drawing in, and admirably sheltered. It was a pity that the shadow of a fatality should have fallen upon it.
She came and stood above the pool and looked at it. It would be easy enough to trip over that low parapet in the dusk and fall into the water. But it was surely not so very deep – two feet, or two and a half. She found a stick in the summerhouse and made it nearly three. People have drowned in less than that. She recalled what Adriana had told her of the evidence at the inquest. Sam Bolton had deposed to finding the body half in and half out of the water – in fact not much more than the head and shoulders had been submerged. Mabel Preston had tripped, fallen forward, and so drowned. A dummy tilted over that low stone wall would have remained like that, but a living woman would only do so if she were stunned by the fall or held beneath the water till she drowned.
Miss Silver explored with the stick. There was nearly three feet of water, and there was no stone upon which Mabel Preston could have hit her head. Cocktails are extremely insidious. She had taken a considerable number of them, but she had not been too much under the influence of alcohol to make her way to this place, and though she may not have been quite steady on her feet, yet the sudden shock of falling head foremost into cold water should certainly have produced some reaction. Her hands would have been able to reach the bottom. There should have been a struggle, an attempt to save herself. How, in that case, was it possible to believe that the lower limbs would remain in the position assumed at the moment of the fall? Adriana had questioned Sam Bolton, and questioned him shrewdly. The dead woman’s knees were still on the parapet when he was trying to get her out of the pool. She had repeated his words – ‘I’d never have done it else, not if it was ever so. What I did, I got down in the pool and I pushed her up, and hard work it was and no mistake.’
It would have been hard work to move that dead dripping thing weighed down by the soaking coat, but when Mabel Preston fell she was alive and the stuff was dry. It would take time for the heavy material to become sodden. Then why had there been no straggle, no reaction to the shock of the cold water? Why did a living, breathing woman just lie as she had fallen and let the water drown her? Try as she would, Miss Silver could find only one explanation. Mabel Preston had been pushed, and the person who pushed her had held her under the water until its work was done.
It was a shocking conclusion, but she could come to no other. She considered whether it would be possible to kneel upon the parapet or behind it and carry out this dreadful act. The low wall was some eighteen inches above the paving which surrounded it, but on the pool side the water rose to within three or four inches of the top, a circumstance no doubt due to the recent heavy rains. If the
author of the murderous attack had leaned over the parapet or kneeled upon it, it would have been perfectly possible to ensure that the woman who had fallen should not rise again.
She wore her gravest expression as she turned to go. Here, on this warm afternoon with the blue of the sky reflected in the pool and the sun bright upon the water, it was a pleasant place. There would be sunshine and blue skies in the time to come, but she wondered how long it would be before anyone would sit here alone for his pleasure, or without remembering that here murder had been done. She was as sure about it as that.
But there was no one who had any reason to wish Mabel Preston dead. If she had been murdered, it was because she had been taken for someone else. She had dyed her hair in imitation of Adriana Ford’s. She went to her death in Adriana’s coat. Adriana’s own description of it came to her mind – great black and white squares and an emerald stripe. Even in the dusk, or by the faltering light of an electric torch, such a pattern would leap to the eye. And Adriana had worn the coat so long that she would not let Meriel have it. ‘Too well known, and people would say I made her wear out my old clothes. She might even come to saying it herself. Meriel is like that.’ Was not that what Adriana had said – that or something like it?
As she passed under the arch in the hedge, the sun picked up a point of colour and she stopped. Caught between one twig and another was a wisp of stuff. It was the merest shred, and if the sun had not shone directly on it, she would have passed it by. When she had disentangled it, she had a few silky threads of the colour known as cyclamen. She put them carefully into the palm of her glove and returned to the house.
Invited to tea with Adriana in her own sitting-room, she displayed the shred.
‘Has anyone in the house a dress of this colour?’
Adriana looked at it with disfavour.
‘Meriel has – and quite horribly unbecoming. You’ve got to have white hair, a good skin, and perfect make-up, before you can look at magenta. Meriel isn’t nearly smart enough, and she doesn’t take enough trouble. She wore the dress for the party, and she looked ghastly. Her lipstick clashed by about three shades! But it’s no use telling her anything like that – she just flies into a temper. Where did you get these threads? I shan’t be sorry if she’s torn the dress and can’t wear it any more. Well, where did you get them?’
‘They were caught on the hedge which surrounds the pool.’
Adriana said sharply,
‘On the hedge?’
‘On the inner side of one of the arches. I saw them as I was coming away. I should not have noticed them if the sun had not happened to pick them out.’
Adriana said nothing. Her face became a mask. Before she could speak Meeson came in with the tea. Just as she was going out again Adriana called to her.
‘Gertie, take a look at this!’ She held out the scrap of stuff.
Meeson made a clicking sound with her tongue.
‘Well now, isn’t that Meriel all over! Pays twenty guineas for a dress, and I know she did that, for I saw the bill – left it lying about in her room and the wind blew it down on the floor! And then goes and mucks it up first time she wears it!’
‘Oh, she mucked it up, did she? On Saturday?’
Meeson nodded.
‘Can’t say I was struck on the dress, but she mucked it up properly! Coffee all down the front of it, and cleaners or no cleaners, it’s never going to come out!’
‘So she spilt coffee on it?’
‘Said someone jogged her elbow. “Lord!” I said. “What have you been doing to yourself?” and she said someone had jogged her elbow. “Well,” I said, “you’re never going to get that out this side of kingdom come – not coffee, you can take my word for it!” And she goes pushing past me as if I wasn’t there! But that’s Meriel all over! What she’s done herself, well, it’s always got to be somebody else’s fault! That’s her from a baby!’
She might have gone on, but she was interrupted sharply.
‘When was all this?’
‘When was what, ducks?’
Adriana made an impatient gesture.
‘This coffee-spilling business.’
‘How do I know?’
‘You know when you saw Meriel’s dress with the coffee on it.’
Meeson cast up her eyes.
‘Oh, that? Let’s see – it would be somewhere about the time everyone was getting a move on, for I thought to myself, “Well, anyhow the party’s as good as over, which is better than if it had happened earlier on.”
‘What has she done with the dress?’
‘Took it off to the cleaner’s on the Monday. But they’ll never get those stains out, and so I told her. “Have it dyed,” I said, “and make a job of it – black, or brown, or a good navy. Always very ladylike, a good navy is.” And for once in a way she hadn’t got anything to say.’
When Meeson was gone Adriana looked defiantly at Miss Silver and said,
‘Well?’
Miss Silver had been knitting in a very thoughtful manner. She was, in fact, engaged in the process known as putting two and two together. They added up to an ugly four. She said,
‘What do you make of it yourself, Miss Ford?’
Adriana lifted the teapot and began to pour out. Her hand was perfectly steady.
‘She went down to the pool at some time when she was wearing the dress.’
‘Yes.’
‘She was in the drawing-room during all the time that people were arriving, but after the room got very full I can’t say whether she was there or not. She could have slipped out – only why should she?’
‘She had not worn that dress before?’
‘No.’
‘Then she did go out, since I found a torn shred from it caught on the hedge by the pool.’
Adriana said, ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’
Miss Silver gave her slight formal cough.
‘Milk, if you please, but no sugar.’ She laid down her knitting, took the cup, and continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘We have, then, two certain facts. Miss Meriel went down to the pool, and at some time towards the end of the party she told Meeson that she had spilt coffee on her dress. Did you notice the stains yourself? Either during the party or afterwards?’
Adriana looked startled. She finished pouring out her own cup of tea and set down the teapot. Then she said,
‘But she had changed – when I came out on the landing and they were all in the hall, she had changed!’
‘You are sure about that?’
‘Of course I am sure. She had put on her old green crape, a hideous garment – I can’t think why she ever bought it, but she had no clothes-sense.’ She added milk to the cup and lifted it to her lips, but she did not drink from it. Her hand jerked suddenly and she set it down again.
‘Look here, where is this getting us? Are you asking me to believe that Meriel – Meriel – went down to that pool in the dusk and pushed Mabel in? Because she was wearing my coat – because she took her for me? Is that what you are asking me to believe?’
Miss Silver looked at her compassionately.
‘It is not I who am saying these things, Miss Ford. It is you.’
‘What does it matter who says them? Do you think them? Do you believe that Meriel pushed poor Mabel Preston into the pool and held her down there, thinking she was me? And that she then came back into the house and spilt coffee on her dress to hide the stains? There’s moss on the parapet, you know, and the water from the pool would leave a dirty mark, but coffee – coffee would hide anything.’
Miss Silver said firmly,
‘Miss Ford, I have not said any of these things. It is you who are saying them. They exist as a possibility, but a thing that is possible should not necessarily be accepted as a fact. Circumstantial evidence can be extremely misleading. Miss Meriel seems to have been in the neighbourhood of the pool in that cyclamen dress, and she subsequently changed it as it had become stained with coffee. There is a possibility that it
was stained deliberately, and for the purpose of concealing other and more compromising stains, but there is no proof that this was so.’
Adriana lifted her cup, and this time she drank from it, a long steady draught. When she had set it down again she said,
‘She is in a state of resentment against me. It has been going on for a long time. She thinks I could use my influence to push her on to the stage. But she isn’t willing to be trained. She thinks she can stroll in at the top with all the hard work cut out. She thinks I could make that possible. Well, I couldn’t if I would, and I wouldn’t if I could. I said that to her once, and she hated me for saying it. And these last few days she has been very angry with me about that damned coat. She is like that, you know. She sets her heart on something, and she has got to have it. But if she gets it, nine times out of ten she doesn’t care about it any more. There you are – that’s Meriel! But still I don’t think-’
Her voice did not choke, it stopped. There was no colour under the careful make-up. She took a long breath and went on as if there had been no broken sentence.
‘I don’t think she would try to kill me.’
Miss Silver said,
‘She is a very uncontrolled person.’
Adriana nodded.
‘She blows off steam. I have spent my life among people like that. They fly into a temper and get it off the chest. It sounds like a lot more than it really is. The artistic temperament – and a bit of a curse if you have it without the talent which makes it go down!’
When Meeson came up presently for the tray she was in no great hurry to take it.
‘What price me being a spying, tale-tattling old devil?’ she said with the air of one who has received a mortal affront and is determined to rise above it.
Adriana, not unaccustomed to this mood, supplied the question for which Meeson was waiting.
‘And who has been calling you a tale-tattling spy?’
Meeson tossed her head.
‘Tale-tattling, spying devil is what it was – and twenty years ago I’d have turned her up and spanked her for it! Spoilt her – that’s what you’ve done! And not the first time I’ve told you what would come of it! Spying! Me! And tale-tattling, which my worst enemy couldn’t throw up at me! “Now look here, Meriel,” I said, “that’s enough and a bit too much! There’s Miss Ford showing me that bit of stuff off of the dress you tore, and all I said was, ‘Torn it was – and what’s a tear more or less, for it’s neither here nor there!’ ” I said. And she come back on me like a fury and said she’d take her dying oath she never tore it! And “Oh, yes, you did!” I said. “And what you were doing down by that horrid pool in a brand new dress – it isn’t for me to say!” Well, ducks, you’d have thought I’d hit her. “I wasn’t down by the pool,” she said. And I said, “Oh, yes, you were, my lady! And that’s where you tore your dress, because that’s where Miss Silver found the scrap from it! Just outside the door I was, getting it open, when she told Miss Ford about finding it caught in the hedge!”’
The Silent Pool Page 13