Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

I refused to be riled. Anyway, she was perfectly right, I would expect a salary. I’d got to live. Drew seemed not to have heard his wife. Or perhaps he had at that. “We can talk it over later, Miss Bennett. In private.”

  “How wonderful,” exclaimed Tansy, clasping her thin hands together. She gushed at me, “I do hope you can help poor darling Janey. I get so worried about her sometimes.”

  Maybe, I thought, Tansy is going to be my biggest hurdle. Her sort would smother any child with over-protective love. Drew Barrington, once convinced that I could help his daughter, could be expected to co-operate intelligently. And I guessed Corinne wouldn’t dare to oppose him openly.

  But Tansy! Dear, dotty Tansy!

  “I should try to forget that there’s anything to be anxious about,” I told her gently. “Don’t always rush to help Jane out when her tongue gets knotted. Praise her when she’s good, and punish her when she’s naughty.”

  “Punish her? Oh, but I couldn’t punish our poor dear little Janey.”

  “I expect she’d almost thank you for it. She wants to be an ordinary little girl, not a special case needing special treatment—some sort of oddity. I remember a seven-year-old patient coming to the clinic one day, proud as punch because his mother had actually shouted at him for being naughty—just as she sometimes shouted at his younger sister.”

  There was a slightly stunned pause, and then Drew said slowly, “That makes good sense.”

  “But surely,” Felix chimed in, artfully artless, “surely something must have made Jane start stammering. I mean, not all children in her position are affected like this.”

  “What are you getting at, Felix?” Corinne snapped angrily. “Children in her position?”

  “Do I really need to explain, darling? I should have thought it was only too obvious.”

  I said pacifically, “Perhaps it might help if we could determine just when it was you first became aware of Jane’s speech difficulties. Could you pin it down precisely?”

  This was a routine question at the clinic. The way it was answered often revealed a lot about the attitude of the patient’s family.

  “My husband has already told you,” Corinne said sharply. “Jane’s always stammered. Ever since she began to talk.”

  “But do you mean that with her very first words you realized she was going to be a stammerer?”

  “Of course not—that’s just absurd.”

  Drew looked at his wife thoughtfully. “I remember you saying to me one day that Jane seemed to be stammering. That would be about... “

  “I didn’t tell you,” said Corinne abruptly.

  “Didn’t you?” He frowned, and I thought he flushed too. “In that case, it must have been Aunt Tansy.”

  “It’s so tragic for the poor little soul,” said Tansy, abstractedly collecting plates together. She piled them on to the trolley and wheeled it to the door. “I think it’s sherry trifle for dessert.”

  I turned back to Drew. “Is there any way you could fix the date when your aunt mentioned it to you?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He was shaking his head. “As I said, I thought it was my wife. The recollection is rather hazy.”

  Gwen poked at her spectacles. “Well, I should say I’ve been aware of the stammering for about two years now.”

  “What makes you say two years?” I pressed. “Could you be more exact, Gwen?”

  “Sorry. As you know, I’m only down here for weekends, and I don’t see that much of the child. It just seems like a couple of years, that’s all.”

  I persisted. Memories are often buried deep, and questioning can bring them to the top of the mind again. “Perhaps you could pin it down by association with something else that was happening at the same time. For instance, was it winter or summer?”

  They all gave the appearance of thinking hard. All except Corinne, who made it quite clear that she considered the whole thing a lot of nonsense.

  Verity leaned forward in a studied pose and announced languidly, “The year before last I spent most of the summer abroad, I was in Greece ...”

  “With Carol Fielding’s husband,” Felix finished for her, grinning maliciously.

  Little Miss Pink had come in with a large tray and was clearing away the dishes Tansy had overlooked. In a quiet aside Drew said, “By the way, Pinky, Mr. Wayne will be coming in later for coffee.”

  “Damn.” Corinne’s hand came down on the table with a loud smack. “Must you keep asking the man up to the house, Drew?”

  “Yes, Corinne, I must,” he observed mildly. “It’s business. And if Bill isn’t invited to dinner, the least I can do is to offer him coffee.”

  “I don’t know why you dislike him so much,” Verity remarked to her sister. “Bill’s all right.”

  Felix seemed amused. “Naturally you’d think so, darling.”

  “And just what do you mean by that?”

  “Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?”

  Pinky banged a cream jug on the table, her small features screwed up tight in a disapproving frown. “Now you oughtn’t to say things like that to your sister, Mr. Felix. It’s not decent.” She regarded Corinne severely. “And I’m sure I can’t think why you don’t like Mr. Wayne, I always find him a very nice sort of gentleman.”

  “Ah, but you see, my dear Pinky,” said Felix softly, “there was a time when ...”

  “Don’t be a damned fool,” Corinne spat at him. “You know perfectly well that I’ve never liked the man. He’s an utter boor.”

  Her brother’s ironical eyebrows rocketed upwards.

  I was beginning to understand that Drew simply allowed these endless waves of petty bickering to wash over him. They didn’t touch him. Or perhaps the hurt was too deeply hidden to show.

  The best thing, I decided, was to follow his example and accept the backchat as punctuation to the main theme. Doggedly I returned to my question about when they’d first noticed Jane was stammering.

  “Sometimes it’s possible to pinpoint the time by reference to some fixed event. Like Christmas or Easter, or someone’s birthday.”

  We went back to head-shaking and muttering. They seemed to be insistent that Jane had always stammered. Or else, they suggested, it had been so gradual a thing that it had only slowly become obvious.

  I was puzzled. In my experience a dramatic beginning was usually reported. Stammers are so often born when parents happen to notice a perfectly normal babyish hesitation, and suddenly start to panic about their child’s speech.

  This case was going against the book.

  Tansy reappeared, bringing in the dessert. I drew her back into the discussion by asking if she could recall exactly when it was she first noticed Jane stammering.

  She went straight into a tizzy. “The poor little darling has always done it. Always.”

  I didn’t like contradicting Tansy, but I had to keep on trying if I was going to get anywhere at all.

  “You see, that doesn’t altogether tally with what Mr. Barrington just said. He has an idea that you first drew his attention to the problem.”

  She looked quite startled. “Drew said that?”

  “Yes. Don’t you remember? You were in the room.”

  “I didn’t tell him.” She shook her head so that the crystal goblets rattled on the silver tray. “He made a mistake.”

  Felix said in a tone of serious reflection, “Casting your mind back two whole years is quite a job. Wasn’t that when we had such a long hot summer?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said encouragingly. “I was still in England then, and I can remember a blissful holiday in September ...”

  Too late I saw the glint in Felix’s eyes, and knew he was engineering some devilry.

  “You couldn’t have called it exactly blissful at Mildenhall,” he said in a heavyweight voice. He paused for effect before adding, “That was when old Brian caught it. Silly fool, to get himself stoned and take a header into the pond.”

  Right behind me Tansy shrieked. There was a slithering no
ise, and then a fearful crash. I swung round to see the tray at her feet, a hideous gooey mess of trifle and broken glass strewn stickily across the carpet.

  But she wasn’t looking down at the damage. Nor was she looking at Felix. Her wildly staring eyes were fixed on Drew. She seemed terrified, her thin body trembling violently.”

  I reached out to steady her, but Tansy backed away from my hand as if she’d been stung. She went on staring at Drew, panic stricken. Almost out of her mind.

  Drew had jumped up. He leaned forward against the table, fingers clamped tight to the edge. His face was deadly pale.

  I sensed the invisible cord linking aunt and nephew. It was as if he shared her intense distress, as if he deeply understood

  But there seemed to be entreaty, too. Was he asking her not to speak? Was he begging her somehow to contain her splintering emotions?

  For several numbing seconds they gazed at one another. Then with a choking sob Tansy turned and fled from the room.

  In silence we listened to her frantic footsteps echoing on the stairs.

  Chapter Four

  Nobody spoke, nobody moved. More slow seconds ticked by, Drew still rigid at the head of the table, staring at the empty doorway. Then abruptly he swung round to face his brother-in-law,

  “How could you be so callous? You must have known.”

  “Dear God,” exclaimed Felix. “The chap’s been dead two years now. Surely we can breathe his name again.”

  Gwen jerked back to life. “But you can’t expect Tansy not to be upset. Brian was her only son.”

  Tansy’s son? The quaint old thing so perfectly fitted the stock maiden aunt image that I had categorized her blindly.

  Felix was still not satiated. “Brian can’t have been much of a loss to his dear old mum,” he sneered. “I mean he ... well, he wasn’t exactly a saint.” A glance of vindictive amusement was flicked at each of his sisters in turn. “You’ll bear me out on that, won’t you?”

  “Perhaps,” said Drew seriously, “that very fact makes it all the harder for her to bear. When Uncle Alec died, Brian was all she had left. Now she hasn’t got any decent memories of either of them.”

  “She’s got you, though,” said Felix nastily.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You’re the golden boy, according to dear Aunt Tansy. You simply can’t do wrong in her eyes.”

  Sitting in on a family quarrel wasn’t my idea of fun. I got to my feet.

  “Shall I begin clearing up the mess?” I asked Corinne. “I expect Miss Pink will give me something to use.”

  Corinne didn’t even hear me. Or chose not to. It was Gwen who saved me from looking foolish.

  “Good idea, Kim,” she said. “I’ll scrape up the bits .and you fetch a damp cloth. The door to the kitchen is by the stairs.”

  I was only too glad to escape.

  The kitchen was empty. Dishes were piled on the counter awaiting washing up, but otherwise everything was spick and span. There was no floorcloth in sight. Nothing I could use.

  A crackle of gunshots guided me to Miss Pink’s sitting room. I tapped politely, and then rapped hard. Her impatient voice called me to come in.

  Miss Pink was poised on the very edge of her armchair.

  “Half a tick, lovey,” she instructed, a finger raised. “I don’t want to miss this bit.”

  I waited until the shooting was over. Then I asked her for a cloth. “There’s been a slight accident in the dining room.”

  “Oh dear! What’s happened?”

  “Some trifle was spilt,” I said evasively. “It won’t take a minute to clear it up.”

  Staccato western voices were backgrounding our conversation. The sheriff was forming a posse.

  “Do you want me to come?” Miss Pink asked uneagerly, and I saw the relief in her eyes when I told her no. “Well, lovey, you’ll find a clean cloth in a drawer by the sink. On the left, second one down.”

  I wasn’t hurrying. I wanted to allow good time for the emotional temperature in the dining room to drop a few degrees. But in fact, when I got back, everyone except Gwen had disappeared. She was down on her knees, coping with the carpet.

  “I think I’ve got the worst of it up,” she said in a fiat, matter-of-fact voice. “If you could just give it a rub over.”

  While I worked on the sticky patch with my damp cloth, she got to her feet and stood watching me. I sensed her discomfort.

  After a bit she burst out, “Sorry about that scene just now. Felix can be a damn fool sometimes.”

  “I didn’t know your sister had a son,” I remarked, merely for the sake of something to say.

  “We-don’t talk about him,” Gwen said. Her voice tensed up. “Brian was a ... he was a thoroughly bad lot. His death affected poor Tansy terribly. She’s never been the same since that awful day.”

  “Has your sister been a widow for very long?”

  “Oh, it’s years now. Alec Hearne died when Brain was only three.” I could feel Gwen making a big effort to talk calmly. “It was a blessing in disguise, really, except that the wretched man left poor Tansy penniless. Nothing but debts. My brother and his wife at once offered Tansy a home at Mildenhall, and then within a few months of her coming both of them were dead. So Tansy stayed on here with her baby son to keep the place going for Drew until he came of age.”

  “Then the two boys were brought up together?” -

  “Well, not really together. Drew was a good bit older than Brian, you see—about nine years, I think. Brian was only just twenty-four when he was drowned.” The tightness in her voice was building up again. She finished off quickly, “We don’t like to talk about it, though. It upsets my sister.”

  But Tansy wasn’t the only one who got upset at a mention of Brian’s death. And the conspiracy of silence at Mildenhall seemed to be like a festering sore.

  I sat back on my heels and looked up at Gwen. “There, I think it will dry out now without leaving a stain.”

  We went through to the drawing room then, and that too was empty. I wondered where everyone had gone. There seemed no sense of a collective family life in this curious household.

  Gwen made a beeline for the liquor cabinet.

  “God, I could do with a nip,” she said heavily, adding with entirely false gaiety, “A wee drop of the hard stuff.”

  Without bothering to ask me what I wanted, she splashed out two very stiff measures of excellent brandy.

  “That’s far too much,” I protested. “Just a very small one for me, please.”

  “Get along with you, my dear. It’ll buck you up.”

  I didn’t argue any more; there was no need for me to drink it all. But when a few minutes later Drew came into the room, the jumbo-sized brandy became a silent indictment. What would he think of me? Furtively I slid the glass on a small table and drifted away, trying to disown such alcoholic immoderation.

  Gwen was frowning with deep anxiety. “How’s Tansy now, Drew? Is she all right?”

  He didn’t reply in words. With an uncertain, unhappy shrug, he moved across to the windows and stood staring out into the gathering blue dusk.

  Gwen watched him morosely, not saying anything more.

  I wondered if my presence was inhibiting Gwen and Drew from talking. But somehow I didn’t think so. I suspected there was no real easiness between them, no comfortable relationship.

  There was no comfortable give-and-take relationship between any of the people at Mildenhall, I decided. And was it all because a man had drowned here, two years ago?

  Two years! Yet still the mention of Brian Hearne’s name wrought consternation. I’d seen Tansy rush from the room in near hysteria. Drew had been afraid, I felt sure; and Corinne and Gwen too. Grimly, silently afraid. A stunned fear. And Felix and Verity, outside the circle of sudden alarm, had in some curious way been just as certainly involved.

  The tight silence of the drawing room was broken by Miss Pink, who came racing in with the trolley.

  “Here’s t
he coffee,” she announced breathlessly. “I’ll just leave it here. I want to get back ...”

  ‘Where are the others?” Gwen asked her.

  “In the music room I think, lovey. I’ll pop in on the way and tell them to come in here if they want coffee. And I’ll leave the front door on the latch, so Mr. Wayne can come straight in ...”

  She scurried off across the hall, pulled hard by her beloved television.

  “It keeps her happy,” said Drew, with a faint and rueful smile. “And we might not be able to hang on to her without it.”

  “Yes, you’re surprisingly isolated here,” I said, grasping what looked like a safe conversational thread. “I hadn’t realized there were still such remote spots in Sussex. It’s very lovely, of course, but I suppose for some people it must seem a bit quiet.”

  Drew looked at me as if I’d made some fatuous comment. “Oh, Pinky doesn’t mind the quiet.”

  Well, I was only trying to be pleasant.

  Drew and Gwen fell back into forbidding silence, ignoring the coffee. I felt thoroughly discomfited. A drop of brandy would have suited me right then, but I wasn’t going to pick up that knock-out dose under Drew’s very eyes.

  Patiently, I had another try at getting some small-talk going. “You’ve got a music room then. Are you a very musical family?”

  Gwen prodded at her spectacles. “It’s a relic from my grandparents’ days. I can just remember the elegant soirées they used to hold each week when I was small.”

  She drained her glass, sighed at the memory of happier times, and immediately awarded herself another stiff peg.

  “Nowadays my wife uses the music room to practice,” Drew said slowly. “She is, or rather was, a professional singer.”

  “How interesting.” At last I’d got him to say something comparatively normal. “What sort of thing did she do? Opera, or ...?”

  “No. I suppose you’d describe it as show business.” With a curious note of bitterness, he added, “She gave up her career in order to marry me.”

  Gwen chipped in, “Corinne used to be on television quite a lot. Of course, she’s got the right looks, hasn’t she? That’s what counts above everything.”