Erskine smiled.
“You’ll certainly find it real country all round here. It’s completely isolated. Our neighbours are few and far between.”
Gwenda thought she detected an undercurrent of bleakness in the pleasant voice. She had a sudden glimpse of a lonely life—of short dark winter days with the wind whistling in the chimneys—the curtains drawn—shut in—shut in with that woman with the hungry, unhappy eyes—and neighbours few and far between.
Then the vision faded. It was summer again, with the french windows open to the garden—with the scent of roses and the sounds of summer drifting in.
She said: “This is an old house, isn’t it?”
Erskine nodded.
“Queen Anne. My people have lived here for nearly three hundred years.”
“It’s a lovely house. You must be very proud of it.”
“It’s rather a shabby house now. Taxation makes it difficult to keep anything up properly. However, now the children are out in the world, the worst strain is over.”
“How many children have you?”
“Two boys. One’s in the Army. The other’s just come down from Oxford. He’s going into a publishing firm.”
His glance went to the mantelpiece and Gwenda’s eyes followed his. There was a photograph there of two boys—presumably about eighteen and nineteen, taken a few years ago, she judged. There was pride and affection in his expression.
“They’re good lads,” he said, “though I say it myself.”
“They look awfully nice,” said Gwenda.
“Yes,” said Erskine. “I think it’s worth it—really. Making sacrifices for one’s children, I mean,” he added in answer to Gwenda’s enquiring look.
“I suppose—often—one has to give up a good deal,” said Gwenda.
“A great deal sometimes….”
Again she caught a dark undercurrent, but Mrs. Erskine broke in, saying in her deep authoritative voice, “And you are really looking for a house in this part of the world? I’m afraid I don’t know of anything at all suitable round here.”
And wouldn’t tell me if you did, thought Gwenda, with a faint spurt of mischief. That foolish old woman is actually jealous, she thought. Jealous because I’m talking to her husband and because I’m young and attractive!
“It depends how much of a hurry you’re in,” said Erskine.
“No hurry at all really,” said Giles cheerfully. “We want to be sure of finding something we really like. At the moment we’ve got a house in Dillmouth—on the south coast.”
Major Erskine turned away from the tea table. He went to get a cigarette box from a table by the window.
“Dillmouth,” said Mrs. Erskine. Her voice was expressionless. Her eyes watched the back of her husband’s head.
“Pretty little place,” said Giles. “Do you know it at all?”
There was a moment’s silence, then Mrs. Erskine said in that same expressionless voice, “We spent a few weeks there one summer—many, many years ago. We didn’t care for it—found it too relaxing.”
“Yes,” said Gwenda. “That’s just what we find. Giles and I feel we’d prefer more bracing air.”
Erskine came back with the cigarettes. He offered the box to Gwenda.
“You’ll find it bracing enough round here,” he said. There was a certain grimness in his voice.
Gwenda looked up at him as he lighted her cigarette for her.
“Do you remember Dillmouth at all well?” she asked artlessly.
His lips twitched in what she guessed to be a sudden spasm of pain. In a noncommittal voice he answered, “Quite well, I think. We stayed—let me see—at the Royal George—no, Royal Clarence Hotel.”
“Oh yes, that’s the nice old-fashioned one. Our house is quite near there. Hillside it’s called, but it used to be called St.—St.—Mary’s, was it, Giles?”
“St. Catherine’s,” said Giles.
This time there was no mistaking the reaction. Erskine turned sharply away, Mrs. Erskine’s cup clattered on her saucer.
“Perhaps,” she said abruptly, “you would like to see the garden.”
“Oh yes, please.”
They went out through the french windows. It was a well-kept, well-stocked garden, with a long border and flagged walks. The care of it was principally Major Erskine’s, so Gwenda gathered. Talking to her about roses, about herbaceous plants, Erskine’s dark, sad face lit up. Gardening was clearly his enthusiasm.
When they finally took their leave, and were driving away in the car, Giles asked hesitantly, “Did you—did you drop it?”
Gwenda nodded.
“By the second clump of delphiniums.” She looked down at her finger and twisted the wedding ring on it absently.
“And supposing you never find it again?”
“Well, it’s not my real engagement ring. I wouldn’t risk that.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I’m very sentimental about that ring. Do you remember what you said when you put it on my finger? A green emerald because I was an intriguing green-eyed little cat.”
“I dare say,” said Giles dispassionately, “that our peculiar form of endearments might sound odd to someone of, say, Miss Marple’s generation.”
“I wonder what she’s doing now, the dear old thing. Sitting in the sun on the front?”
“Up to something—if I know her! Poking here, or prying there, or asking a few questions. I hope she doesn’t ask too many one of these days.”
“It’s quite a natural thing to do—for an old lady, I mean. It’s not as noticeable as though we did it.”
Giles’s face sobered again.
“That’s why I don’t like—” He broke off. “It’s you having to do it that I mind. I can’t bear the feeling that I sit at home and send you out to do the dirty work.”
Gwenda ran a finger down his worried cheek.
“I know, darling, I know. But you must admit, it’s tricky. It’s impertinent to catechize a man about his past love affairs—but it’s the kind of impertinence a woman can just get away with—if she’s clever. And I mean to be clever.”
“I know you’re clever. But if Erskine is the man we are looking for—”
Gwenda said meditatively: “I don’t think he is.”
“You mean we’re barking up the wrong tree?”
“Not entirely. I think he was in love with Helen all right. But he’s nice, Giles, awfully nice. Not the strangling kind at all.”
“You haven’t an awful lot of experience of the strangling kind, have you, Gwenda?”
“No. But I’ve got my woman’s instinct.”
“I dare say that’s what a strangler’s victims often say. No, Gwenda, joking apart, do be careful, won’t you?”
“Of course. I feel so sorry for the poor man—that dragon of a wife. I bet he’s had a miserable life.”
“She’s an odd woman … Rather alarming somehow.”
“Yes, quite sinister. Did you see how she watched me all the time?”
“I hope the plan will go off all right.”
III
The plan was put into execution the following morning.
Giles, feeling, as he put it, rather like a shady detective in a divorce suit, took up his position at a point of vantage overlooking the front gate of Anstell Manor. About half past eleven he reported to Gwenda that all had gone well. Mrs. Erskine had left in a small Austin car, clearly bound for the market town three miles away. The coast was clear.
Gwenda drove up to the front door and rang the bell. She asked for Mrs. Erskine and was told she was out. She then asked for Major Erskine. Major Erskine was in the garden. He straightened up from operations on a flowerbed as Gwenda approached.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” said Gwenda. “But I think I must have dropped a ring somewhere out here yesterday. I know I had it when we came out from tea. It’s rather loose, but I couldn’t bear to lose it because it’s my engagement ring.”
The hunt was so
on under way. Gwenda retraced her steps of yesterday, tried to recollect where she had stood and what flowers she had touched. Presently the ring came to light near a large clump of delphiniums. Gwenda was profuse in her relief.
“And now can I get you a drink, Mrs. Reed? Beer? A glass of sherry? Or would you prefer coffee, or something like that?”
“I don’t want anything—no, really. Just a cigarette—thanks.”
She sat down on a bench and Erskine sat down beside her.
They smoked for a few minutes in silence. Gwenda’s heart was beating rather fast. No two ways about it. She had to take the plunge.
“I want to ask you something,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll think it terribly impertinent of me. But I want to know dreadfully—and you’re probably the only person who could tell me. I believe you were once in love with my stepmother.”
He turned an astonished face towards her.
“With your stepmother?”
“Yes. Helen Kennedy. Helen Halliday as she became afterwards.”
“I see.” The man beside her was very quiet. His eyes looked out across the sunlit lawn unseeingly. The cigarette between his fingers smouldered. Quiet as he was, Gwenda sensed a turmoil within that taut figure, the arm of which touched her own.
As though answering some question he had put to himself, Erskine said: “Letters, I suppose.”
Gwenda did not answer.
“I never wrote her many—two, perhaps three. She said she had destroyed them—but women never do destroy letters, do they? And so they came into your hands. And you want to know.”
“I want to know more about her. I was—very fond of her. Although I was such a small child when—she went away.”
“She went away?”
“Didn’t you know?”
His eyes, candid and surprised, met hers.
“I’ve no news of her,” he said, “since—since that summer in Dillmouth.”
“Then you don’t know where she is now?”
“How should I? It’s years ago—years. All finished and done with. Forgotten.”
“Forgotten?”
He smiled rather bitterly.
“No, perhaps not forgotten … You’re very perceptive, Mrs. Reed. But tell me about her. She’s not—dead, is she?”
A small cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilled their necks and passed.
“I don’t know if she is dead or not,” said Gwenda. “I don’t know anything about her. I thought perhaps you might know?”
She went on as he shook his head: “You see, she went away from Dillmouth that summer. Quite suddenly one evening. Without telling anyone. And she never came back.”
“And you thought I might have heard from her?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head.
“No. Never a word. But surely her brother—doctor chap—lives in Dillmouth. He must know. Or is he dead too?”
“No, he’s alive. But he doesn’t know either. You see—they all thought she went away—with somebody.”
He turned his head to look at her. Deep sorrowful eyes.
“They thought she went away with me?”
“Well, it was a possibility.”
“Was it a possibility? I don’t think so. It was never that. Or were we fools—conscientious fools who passed up our chance of happiness?”
Gwenda did not speak. Again Erskine turned his head and looked at her.
“Perhaps you’d better hear about it. There isn’t really very much to hear. But I wouldn’t like you to misjudge Helen. We met on a boat going out to India. One of the children had been ill, and my wife was following on the next boat. Helen was going out to marry a man in the Woods and Forests or something of that kind. She didn’t love him. He was just an old friend, nice and kind, and she wanted to get away from home where she wasn’t happy. We fell in love.”
He paused.
“Always a bald kind of statement. But it wasn’t—I want to make that quite clear—just the usual shipboard love affair. It was serious. We were both—well—shattered by it. And there wasn’t anything to be done. I couldn’t let Janet and the children down. Helen saw it the same way as I did. If it had been only Janet—but there were the boys. It was all hopeless. We agreed to say good-bye and try and forget.”
He laughed, a short mirthless laugh.
“Forget? I never forgot—not for one moment. Life was just a living Hell. I couldn’t stop thinking about Helen….
“Well, she didn’t marry the chap she had been going out to marry. At the last moment, she just couldn’t face it. She went home to England and on the way home she met this other man—your father, I suppose. She wrote to me a couple of months later telling me what she had done. He was very unhappy over the loss of his wife, she said, and there was a child. She thought that she could make him happy and that it was the best thing to do. She wrote from Dillmouth. About eight months later my father died and I came into this place. I sent in my papers and came back to England. We wanted a few weeks’ holiday until we could get into this house. My wife suggested Dillmouth. Some friend had mentioned it as a pretty place and quiet. She didn’t know, of course, about Helen. Can you imagine the temptation? To see her again. To see what this man she had married was like.”
There was a short silence, then Erskine said:
“We came and stayed at the Royal Clarence. It was a mistake. Seeing Helen again was Hell … She seemed happy enough, on the whole—I didn’t know whether she cared still, or whether she didn’t … Perhaps she’d got over it. My wife, I think, suspected something … She’s—she’s a very jealous woman—always has been.”
He added brusquely, “That’s all there is to it. We left Dillmouth—”
“On August 17th,” said Gwenda.
“Was that the date? Probably. I can’t remember exactly.”
“It was a Saturday,” said Gwenda.
“Yes, you’re right. I remember Janet said it might be a crowded day to travel north—but I don’t think it was….”
“Please try and remember, Major Erskine. When was the last time you saw my stepmother—Helen?”
He smiled, a gentle, tired smile.
“I don’t need to try very hard. I saw her the evening before we left. On the beach. I’d strolled down there after dinner—and she was there. There was no one else about. I walked up with her to her house. We went through the garden—”
“What time?”
“I don’t know … Nine o’clock, I suppose.”
“And you said good-bye?”
“And we said good-bye.” Again he laughed. “Oh, not the kind of good-bye you’re thinking of. It was very brusque and curt. Helen said: ‘Please go away now. Go quickly. I’d rather not—’ She stopped then—and I—I just went.”
“Back to the hotel?”
“Yes, yes, eventually. I walked a long way first—right out into the country.”
Gwenda said, “It’s difficult with dates—after so many years. But I think that that was the night she went away—and didn’t come back.”
“I see. And as I and my wife left the next day, people gossiped and said she’d gone away with me. Charming minds people have.”
“Anyway,” said Gwenda bluntly, “she didn’t go away with you?”
“Good Lord, no, there was never any question of such a thing.”
“Then why do you think,” asked Gwenda, “that she went away?”
Erskine frowned. His manner changed, became interested.
“I see,” he said. “That is a bit of a problem. She didn’t—er—leave any explanation?”
Gwenda considered. Then she voiced her own belief.
“I don’t think she left any word at all. Do you think she went away with someone else?”
“No, of course she didn’t.”
“You seem rather sure about that.”
“I am sure.”
“Then why did she go?”
“If she went off—suddenly—like that—I can only see one possible reas
on. She was running away from me.”
“From you?”
“Yes. She was afraid, perhaps, that I’d try to see her again—that I’d pester her. She must have seen that I was still—crazy about her … Yes, that must have been it.”
“It doesn’t explain,” said Gwenda, “why she never came back. Tell me, did Helen say anything to you about my father? That she was worried about him? Or—or afraid of him? Anything like that?”
“Afraid of him? Why? Oh I see, you thought he might have been jealous. Was he a jealous man?”
“I don’t know. He died when I was a child.”
“Oh, I see. No—looking back—he always seemed normal and pleasant. He was fond of Helen, proud of her—I don’t think more. No, I was the one who was jealous of him.”
“They seemed to you reasonably happy together?”
“Yes, they did. I was glad—and yet, at the same time, it hurt, to see it … No, Helen never discussed him with me. As I tell you, we were hardly ever alone, never confidential together. But now that you have mentioned it, I do remember thinking that Helen was worried….”
“Worried?”
“Yes. I thought perhaps it was because of my wife—” He broke off. “But it was more than that.”
He looked again sharply at Gwenda.
“Was she afraid of her husband? Was he jealous of other men where she was concerned?”
“You seem to think not.”
“Jealousy is a very queer thing. It can hide itself sometimes so that you’d never suspect it.” He gave a short quick shiver. “But it can be frightening—very frightening….”
“Another thing I would like to know—” Gwenda broke off.
A car had come up the drive. Major Erskine said, “Ah, my wife has come back from shopping.”
In a moment, as it were, he became a different person. His tone was easy yet formal, his face expressionless. A slight tremor betrayed that he was nervous.
Mrs. Erskine came striding round the corner of the house.
Her husband went towards her.
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