Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

  And then suddenly the lights all went out.

  The sheer surprise of it nearly threw me in. For a second I teetered, arms windmilling. Then I managed to jerk backwards and steady myself. I had to fight off panic as the secret, shaming fear of dark water came sneaking through from childhood. But reason soon took charge. I was in no danger.

  “Bill,” I called. “What’s happened?”

  There was no answer. Just the faint gurgling of water through the sluices.

  Was he fooling about, trying to scare me?

  “Bill! For heaven’s sake! I nearly fell in.”

  It was only then I realized that he wasn’t near enough to hear me. The light switch was in the packing shed, over fifty yards away.

  I was poised on a narrow concrete strip, surrounded by the black ponds. I shuddered. But I seemed to remember a wider, safer path a little way to my left.

  I put a cautious foot forward. All right so far. I took another step, and yet another. At the next try my foot slipped over the edge and I got a shoeful of icy water before I recovered my balance.

  That decided me. I was staying right here until the lights came on again.

  “Bill,” I yelled with all my lung power. “Put the lights on, you idiot.”

  Still he didn’t answer. Absurdly, I began to feel scared again. But there was really nothing to worry about. The worst I could suffer was a cold ducking in a couple of feet of cold water. At least, I imagined it was no more than two feet deep in these small ponds.

  A picture came flashing into my mind of Bill feeding the trout. I remembered the way the quiet pool had boiled with savagely leaping fish.

  I stood rigidly still, trying to reassure myself. All right then, let him have his stupid joke. I’d stick it out until he got bored with the game.

  I expect it was about two minutes I stood there in the darkness. No more. One hundred and twenty dragging seconds. Then a door in one of the buildings at the back opened and yellow light streamed out.

  I heard Bill’s startled exclamation. “What the devil!” He paused, then shouted urgently, “Kim! Are you okay?”

  “Put the lights on, you halfwit,” I shouted back.

  I heard him running; another door banged. Then the outside lights blazed on again, almost blinding me for a moment.

  Bill raced towards me through the web of narrow paths with long-practiced sureness,

  “You are a fool,” I said in sharp anger. “What did you go and do a thing like that for?”

  “Me?” He took my arm, and said seriously, “I didn’t put the lights off, Kim. Honestly ...”

  “Come off it. If you didn’t, who on earth did?”

  He led me back to good solid ground again. My legs wobbled feebly, and I was glad he was there to keep me upright.

  “Look, sweetheart, you’ve got to believe me, I had nothing to do with it. There must have been a power lapse or something.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Bill. You must think I’m dumb.”

  “But I’d popped into the office for something - round the back where it’s a different circuit. I didn’t notice the main lights were off, so …”

  I was in no mood to listen to his protests of innocence. When he had fixed the new screen we got back in the car and drove off with a curtain of anger between us.

  After a few minutes Bill pulled up, cut the ignition and put the lights off. The stars were a million pinholes in a soft black cavern of sky. The absolute peace of the country night contrasted with the jagged silence inside the car.

  Bill took me by the shoulders and pulled me towards him.

  “Kim darling, you’ve got to believe me. Surely you know I wouldn’t do a crazy thing like that. You might have been, well ... badly hurt.”

  I shook him off. With slow patience I said, “If it wasn’t you, then it was someone else. I’ve never believed in gremlins, Bill.”

  For quite a while he didn’t speak, but just sat slumped in his seat, staring moodily ahead.

  At last he said in a low, troubled voice, “Yes, I reckon you’re right about that. I’m afraid somebody must have it in for you, Kim.”

  Chapter Nine

  The evening with Bill Wayne had been a wretched failure. We packed it in early, to the clear relief of both of us. I still only half accepted that it wasn’t Bill who’d put the lights out. He hadn’t attempted to explain why he’d been gone so long, leaving me stuck there in the dark.

  Who else could it have been? And why? Was it just some stupid joke? Or had somebody at Mildenhall really got it in for me, and been trying to scare me?

  I considered the possibilities.

  Felix might well have thought it amusing—his puerile sense of humor was warped in that sort of direction. But he’d been with his sisters and their guests in the music room.

  That left Tansy and Miss Pink, probably together in Pinky’s sitting room. And Drew.

  Crazy.

  But Drew would know where the switch was, better than anyone else except Bill. I couldn’t see Drew in the practical joker role, though. And as for the alternative ...

  I had to take my puzzle to bed with me. In the early hours, lying fitfully awake, the thing took on terrifying proportions. Mildenhall became a house of menace, of evil people with evil intentions.

  But by morning, another bright and sunny day, my focus was back. Of course it had been Bill Wayne. Daft idiot. If that was the sort of thing he got up to, then I was through with him.

  Taking Jane to school was a nice slice of normality. She, at least, wasn’t on the most way-out list of suspects. I was getting to enjoy this commuting to and fro with her. And I found it profitable, too. The short drives were a chance of reaching through to the real Jane behind the fear barrier. I was nearly always able to catch her childish sense of wonder with some fascinating bit of nature-spotting, and when her attention was fully absorbed, her stammer faded.

  That Thursday morning, coming back through the trout farm after dropping Jane off at school, I noticed Drew just closing the door of the ice shed. On a sudden impulse I stopped the car. For these past two days I’d hardly seen anything of him, except at mealtimes. It was almost as if he had been deliberately avoiding me.

  He saw the car draw up, and came walking over slowly.

  “Mr. Barrington, I’ve been hoping to get the chance of a few words with you.”

  “Yes?” There was no spark of enthusiasm about him. Only a cold stiff courtesy, the merest hint of a smile.

  Unnerved by his attitude, I hurried on, “I thought it would be useful for us to have a chat about Jane’s progress sometime,”

  “Oh yes, Jane’s progress.” He looked around him vaguely.

  “Perhaps we could fix er ... an appointment?”

  “You can come to my office now, if you wish,” he muttered.

  “You’re sure it’s not inconvenient?”

  “It will do as well as any other time.”

  The farm office was tucked behind the other buildings. He must have been in here while Bill was showing me around on Saturday.

  Drew invited me to sit down. He remained standing himself, just to impress on me how very brief I’d got to be.

  The room was small and workaday, with books spilled around everywhere. “It’s a bit cramped,” said Drew, by way of apology.

  “Not at all,” Cutting out the polite chitchat to give more time for the serious conversation, I rushed on, “I want to tell you what I’ve been doing with Jane, and where we’re heading.”

  “Yes,” he said quickly, “I’ve been wondering about that.”

  I took this interjection to be nothing more than a verbal nod, a well-mannered invitation to me to continue. The significance of the words didn’t hit me until later.

  I plunged straight on, “I realize, of course, that the sort of thing Jane and I do together may seem like nonsense to a layman, but I do assure you that I know what I’m doing. Jane is too young for formal speech training. I have to work indirectly, by making it all seem like a ga
me.”

  I paused for another assenting nod from him. It didn’t come. Drew was watching me with an entirely blank face.

  “The idea is to build up Jane’s self-confidence in her ability to speak freely, so that gradually the stammering habit is left behind. But it’s proving much more difficult than I’d hoped. Every afternoon I have to waste an awful lot of time simply regaining her trust. The poor child is being pulled apart by conflicting loyalties. Inevitably, she can sense strong disapproval of my methods.”

  Drew didn’t help me one little bit. He refused to get my meaning.

  “I think you’ll have to be rather more specific than that, Miss Bennett.”

  I couldn’t very well denounce Corinne to her husband, so the whole blame had to be kid upon Tansy’s shoulders.

  “I thought your aunt supported me at first, but this last day or so she’s become very critical. Of course, I can understand she feels a bit put out that I’m taking up so much of Jane’s attention. I’ve tried hard to explain just what it is I’m aiming at, but somehow she doesn’t seem to get the idea at all.”

  He did speak then, but what he said was hardly meant to be reassuring.

  “Aunt Tansy thinks you are overtaxing Jane.”

  “Nonsense!” I regretted the word the instant it was out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. But cottonwool treatment won’t help your daughter, Mr. Barrington.”

  “Are you suggesting that my aunt is too soft?” he asked coldly. “Surely it’s obvious that she could only want what is best for the child. She loves Jane very dearly.”

  “Love can be suffocating sometimes.”

  I’d hoped a frank talk with Drew would work wonders. Instead, he and I seemed to be heading for open battle.

  He said now, in the flattest voice he could find: “I owe a great deal to my aunt, Miss Bennett. I am very content to leave the management of my daughter in her hands.”

  It didn’t tie up with what he’d said before. Drew had freely admitted that Tansy wasn’t the best person to look after a child. And he’d been dead right.

  I took a firm hold of my self-control before it escaped. With enormous patience, I said, “Perhaps you could have a quiet word with your aunt. Just explain that what I’m doing is the right thing for Jane, even if it doesn’t always seem so.”

  Though I was asking for much less than I really needed, it would still be better than nothing. But to my dismay Drew looked distinctly dubious. He hesitated a moment before answering.

  “Then you do feel you are making real progress with Jane, Miss Bennett?”

  “Real progress—in only four days!” I laughed without amusement. “I’ve made a small beginning. To claim more than that would be absurd.”

  “I see. How much longer do you think it will be before there are any noticeable results?”

  I felt so angry I wanted to let him have it between the eyes. But that was unthinkable. Why did I have to be a speech-therapist engaged in training his child? Why couldn’t I have been his secretary or something ordinary like that? A job where, without an assault of conscience, I could fire off a few home truths and leave him stranded. Or better still, sweep silently and with superb dignity out of the room and out of Drew Barrington’s life.

  Instead, I answered his question with professional calm.

  “It’s impossible to forecast how soon there is likely to be any obvious improvement in Jane’s speech. If conditions were perfect ...”

  “But we both know that nothing in this world is perfect.”

  His message got through. It was Kim Bennett he thought fell short of perfection. Me, and only me.

  Well, he was the boss. If he wanted me to leave I’d have no alternative. But until he told me so straight out, I intended to hang on like grim death. Jane Barrington was going to be my crusade, something I could look back on without shame.

  So meekly I turned the other cheek to his hostility. “I do assure you that Jane will improve in time. Please just be patient for a while.”

  His brief nod indicated merely that he heard me. It accepted nothing. I walked out of his office then because I could think of no other soft and reasonable words to say.

  Before I turned the corner of the large packing shed, I glanced over my shoulder. He was standing at the window, watching me moodily.

  By the ponds I paused and looked across at the scene of last night’s practical joke. In the morning sun it all seemed so different. So tranquil, with all the loveliness of rural England. Seeing the little concrete-edged pools, it was absurd to imagine I’d been in any real danger. The paths between them looked solidly wide, the water gaily sparkling.

  And yet... I shivered, as though someone were treading on my grave. What was it about Mildenhall that seemed so chilling, so obscurely menacing?

  Bill Wayne was busy in the store shed. He looked up as I passed the open door. I waved and walked on to the car, but he came hurrying after me.

  “How’s my beautiful Kim this morning?” His eyes were watchful. His question was a sort of litmus paper, dipped to test my reaction.

  He got red for acid.

  But he wasn’t put off. “Will you drive me up to my cottage, please? I want to fetch something.”

  I said sourly, “That’s a likely story.”

  “It’ll do, though.” He was laughing right into my eyes. I suppose he calculated that acid was better than apathy. In my mind I still hadn’t put Bill in the clear over the episode of last night. But right then I badly needed a shoulder to cry on.

  “I’m fed up,” I threw out as a prelude.

  “Not with me, I hope?”

  “With everything. Honestly, Bill, you’d think I was an intruder, the way they carry on.”

  “They?”

  I dodged answering that one. “You’d imagine all I had to do was give Jane a dose of Kim Bennett’s Wonder Elixir or something, and hey presto.”

  “Corinne is a bitch,” he said sympathetically.

  Guard down for a second, I said, “I didn’t mean Corinne.”

  His eyebrows jolted upwards. Stagily, he shot a glance in the direction of Drew’s office and pretended to look shocked.

  I pretended not to notice. I didn’t at all like what he was inferring.

  There was a question I badly wanted to ask Bill—a question that had been niggling uncomfortably. He’d been the one to find Brian Hearne’s body. Why had he so carefully concealed this fact when we’d been talking about the man’s death?

  Somehow I couldn’t manage to bring the words out. Perhaps I wasn’t altogether sure I could take the answer. I’d got an idea, a nebulous, shapeless hunch, that the truth wouldn’t be altogether to Bill’s credit.

  So instead, as we got into the car, I challenged him with something else.

  “You never did explain why you left me stranded last night.”

  “Yes, I did. There was a hole in that screen big enough for the trout to escape through. I was getting a new one from the store.”

  “You were gone a mighty long time.”

  “Yes, sorry about that. I couldn’t find the size I wanted at first, and then I had to go to the office to check a list.”

  It sounded almost too glib to be true. But I let it go. Probably I’d never discover for absolutely sure just who the joker had been.

  I stopped the car by the path leading to Bill’s cottage.

  “You haven’t seen my place yet,” he said.

  “I can see it from here.”

  “I meant inside.”

  “No,” I said with extreme caution, “I haven’t.”

  “What about this evening? I won’t ask you for dinner—I more or less live out of tins. But come up afterwards for a drink”

  Driving on up to the house, I realized that with Bill I’d almost forgotten my problems. He had the sort of natural gaiety that dispelled gloomy thoughts. I decided that the outlook wasn’t such totally unrelieved gray as I’d supposed.

  I left the car in the forecourt and headed for the f
ront door. There was a movement at the hall window and I saw that Tansy was standing there, watching me.

  But when I went inside she had disappeared.

  Chapter Ten

  By teatime the next day I was awaiting Gwen’s arrival with considerable impatience. She’d explained to me that she always left her shop in Chelsea exactly at three o’clock on Fridays in order to get to Mildenhall early and give herself a nice long weekend in the country.

  Since nobody else around here would come clean about Brian Hearne’s death, I was going to have it out with Gwen. Why, I’d insist upon knowing, did the merest mention of that name cause such consternation?

  It was Gwen who’d brought me to Mildenhall, after all, so it was up to her to explain this strangely secretive atmosphere. It was the root cause, I felt convinced, of Jane’s stammering.

  I felt frayed that afternoon. Tansy had been particularly tiresome, constantly dodging in and out of the room as I struggled with Jane, fussing around, sniffing disapproval in the background.

  I had been introducing Jane to the mirror game, which consisted of talking to one’s own reflection. I started things off by spouting Little Miss Muffett with wildly overdone gestures. Jane was soon laughing and wanting to have a go herself. Success! When she wasn’t giggling too much to say anything at all, those difficult explosive sounds emerged easily and fluently.

  Then Tansy trotted in and the stammering began again.

  Soon after four o’clock I called it a day. Never before had any job worn me out like this. I went to my bedroom and mooned around dispiritedly, listening eagerly for Gwen’s arrival.

  But since my room was at the back of the house, I didn’t hear her car. She came bursting into the hall just as she had a week ago, her shout echoing hollowly.

  “Anybody home?”

  This time she got an answer. I went running downstairs to greet her.

  “Hallo, Gwen.”

  “Hiya, Kim. My God, I’ve had a perfect hell of a week. It’s good to get some peace at last.”