Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

  That was a laughable idea—if I’d felt like laughing. Peace and Gwen simply didn’t go together.

  By comparison, my own voice was a mere whisper. “Poor Gwen! I’ll go and ask Miss Pink for some tea. I suppose we’d better not ring for it.”

  Gwen hooted. “No fear. We don’t want another of old Pinky’s sly tickings-off.”

  She tossed down her small case and marched into the drawing room. When I rejoined her she was standing with her back to the empty fireplace, feet spread in her heavy ungainly way.

  “Well, Kim, everything going nice and smoothly in your department?”

  Obviously she was taking my “yes” for granted. I said bluntly: “No, it isn’t going smoothly.”

  “What’s up then, my dear? Having trouble with Jane?”

  “Oh, Jane’s all right. It’s the rest of the family.”

  The windows were wide open. Somebody might easily be out on the terrace and within earshot. Anyway, Gwen’s trumpet blasts would reach pretty nearly to the far end of the lawn.

  ‘We’ll have to leave it for the moment,” I said hastily. “Perhaps when we’ve had tea we could go upstairs.”

  “Oh Lord!” Dismay was heavy in her voice. “That does sound bad.”

  “Yes, it is bad.”

  I didn’t like being so rough with her. Gwen could be intolerably bossy, an interfering dragon of a woman, yet beneath it all she had a big heart. It wasn’t pleasant to trample on her. But it had to be done. I had to shock her defenses wide open,

  I scarcely let the poor thing finish her tea before I shanghaied her to my bedroom. I shut the door. I shut the window.

  “Look here, Gwen,” I fired off, “I can’t work properly in the atmosphere of this house.”

  “But what’s wrong? Everything was fine when I left on Monday.”

  “Oh no, it wasn’t. Right from the start there’s not been a single soul willing to give me any real cooperation. What’s going on in this place? The air is filthy with mistrust and suspicion and backbiting cattiness and I don’t know what.” I paused before adding significantly, “It’s very strange that although nobody could call you a united family, you close ranks the moment a certain subject comes up. Drew and Corinne, Tansy, you ... even Bill Wayne and Miss Pink are cagey.”

  Gwen prodded at her glasses. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear.”

  “I’m talking about Brian Hearne’s death.”

  “Oh?”

  Instantly her eyes were wary, her bewildered face closing up on me.

  “I want to know why it can’t be mentioned at Mildenhall. I’m not just poking my nose in, Gwen. I’m certain that Jane’s trouble is somehow tied up with this peculiar taboo.”

  “Well, you see, we have to think of poor Tansy ...” she began, hedging like mad.

  I cut in brutally, “If that’s all it is, then you can talk quite freely now we’re alone together.”

  I had to wait awhile before she said reluctantly, “What is it you want to know, Kim?”

  “I want to know exactly what I’m up against, I’ve got to work out how I can counter the effect all this is having on Jane!”

  Again I waited. Twice she was on the point of speaking, and dried up. At last she began in a voice that was little more than a murmur, not at all the usual Gwen-like roar.

  “Brian was drowned, that’s all. He was no good, Kim. No great loss to anyone.”

  I had a sudden flash of insight. Odd, I thought, that it hadn’t struck me before.

  “Gwen, did Brian commit suicide? Is that it?”

  “No!” Her protest was so violent that it seemed like confirmation. For a moment I felt sure I’d uncovered the secret they had all been so anxious to conceal.

  Gwen sat down on my bed, her upright figure crumpling slowly into a flabby shapelessness. The mattress sagged under her dead weight. When she spoke again her voice was so rigidly controlled it was totally without expression.

  “Brian didn’t commit suicide, Kim. You can put that idea right out of your mind.”

  “But can I? I know the coroner said there was no reason to suppose he took his own life.”

  “How on earth do you know what the coroner said?” she barked. Now her tone was aggressive, resentful—but with a trace of fear stirred in somewhere.

  Why should I feel guilty? An inquest was a public inquiry, its findings open to everyone. But despite my quick self-justification, there was apology in my reply.

  “I looked it up in the local paper.”

  Her bristles subsided a little. “Oh yes, I didn’t think of that.” She fidgeted with her glasses again, and after a minute asked slowly, “What did the paper have to say?”

  “It was just a straightforward report, I’ll show you.”

  I went to the dressing table to fetch the newspaper cutting. On Monday, after getting back from Chichester, I’d pushed it away out of sight.

  It wasn’t there now.

  I rummaged among my bits and pieces, and finally pulled the drawer right out. The piece of paper had disappeared.

  I knew perfectly well I’d put it in the left-hand top drawer. But I began to doubt my own memory and started searching everywhere. At last I found what I wanted in the top drawer on the opposite side.

  “Here it is,” I said, puzzled but relieved.

  Gwen read the report through in silence, taking her time. Then she handed back the cutting. As I put it away again, a streak of caution made me slip it under the drawer’s lining paper.

  Still Gwen hadn’t spoken.

  “It doesn’t give much away, does it?” I said. “Did anything else come out at the inquest, or was it really as routine as that report suggests?”

  “I ... I don’t really know ...”

  “But you were there, surely?”

  She looked down at her hands, and I realized she was ashamed. Had she really not troubled to attend the inquest on Brian’s death? Her sister’s only son.

  “But Gwen, why didn’t you... ?”

  I broke off and stared at her in astonishment. Gwen had leapt to her feet and flung herself across the room. Without a by-your-leave she began searching frantically through the things in the dressing table drawer.

  “Where-the devil is it? Where did you put it?”

  I followed her over, protesting. “Really, Gwen!”

  She swung round on me, her eyes wild and oddly excited. I postponed my quarrel with her discourtesy and reached under the drawer lining.

  “Here you are,” I said quietly.

  She snatched the cutting and scanned it feverishly. “But ... but it can’t be,” she gasped.

  Bewildered, I looked over Gwen’s shoulder, trying to understand what had upset her.

  She handed back the piece of paper in a lost sort of way, and walked heavily across to the window. For a moment she stood staring out.

  “It wasn’t like that,” she said in a hushed voice.

  I was beginning to get frightened, without knowing why. There was such an intensity about her. I could actually see her big frame trembling.

  “Gwen, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  When at last she spoke again it was not really to me. She seemed to be addressing some inner questioner, some other side of herself that was not yet wholly convinced.

  “It says Brian was wearing just a shirt and trousers. But he had a jacket on ...”

  Then, without another word, without the slightest warning, Gwen passed out, her body slumping heavily to the floor.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gwen must have been unconscious for a full minute.

  I pushed a pillow under her head and straightened her legs. I loosened the neck of her white blouse and slid off those enormous black-rimmed spectacles. Then I ran to the bathroom and came back with a dripping handkerchief and a toothglass of water.

  At last she roused. She blinked, grimaced, and immediately began groping blindly on the floor.

  “Here are your glasses, Gwen.”

  They
pulled her slack face into shape like a corset on a bulging figure. She gave me a feeble smile. Then, remembering, she went paper-white. I thought she was going to faint again.

  I offered her the mug of water. “Drink some of this.”

  She took a few sips, then shook her head.

  “I’m all right now, Kim. Sorry about all that.”

  I helped her get up. She stood shakily, and I held on tight to stop her falling again.

  “I think I’d better go to my own bedroom for a bit.”

  “No, sit here.”

  I reached out a foot and hooked a basket chair closer. I eased her down as gently as I could.

  Very slowly color returned to her cheeks. I watched her without speaking. When she began to show signs of restlessness I decided she was well enough to start talking.

  “You’ve got a lot to explain, Gwen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She said it faintly, and held out a hand for more water. Certain this was just a cover-up, I kept up the pressure as I reached for the glass and gave it to her again.

  “You said something that needs explaining, Gwen.”

  Slow sips of water, long pauses in between. She was playing for time. Time to think. I wasn’t going to let her concoct a fake story.

  “You said Brian had a jacket on. What did you mean by that, exactly?”

  She laughed. I doubt if I’d ever before heard such an utterly phony attempt at hilarity,

  “My dear girl, what do you think I meant?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  Her eyes swiveled sideways, patently insincere. “I just meant that on the evening he died, Brian had been wearing a jacket.”

  “You were here at Mildenhall that night?”

  “Why yes, it was a Friday, you see.”

  However hard I tried, I seemed to get nowhere. I decided to make a sudden switch. Maybe that would shake the truth out of her.

  “Bill Wayne said Brian must have been drunk, and that’s why he fell in the pool.”

  “Yes, that’s absolutely right,” she agreed, leaping at the suggestion much too eagerly. “He was disgustingly drunk.”

  “Nobody seems to have mentioned that fact to the coroner.”

  “Would it have done any good?”

  “I’d have thought it was extremely relevant.”

  Again deadlock. But I was determined to break her down. To leave the subject now would give Gwen time to renew her battered defenses. The way she was eyeing me, I knew her one thought was to escape from my resolute inquisition.

  Perhaps unfairly, because I was not at all sure that I’d have the nerve to go through with it, I threatened her.

  “Look here, Gwen, if you don’t come clean with me I shall go straight to Drew and tell him what you’ve just said. It’s perfectly obvious you’re concealing something important.”

  “Don’t do that, Kim. You mustn’t go to Drew”

  She came bounding out of her chair so that for one crazy moment I thought she was going to attack me, aid I put my arms up. She caught at my wrists, but it was only a beseeching gesture.

  “Don’t stir up the mud, my dear; it’s settled now. All forgotten,”

  That made me see raw red. “Settled? How can you say it’s all forgotten? Look at your sister; look at your nephew and his wife; look at that poor child of theirs. The Mildenhall air is poisoned, Gwen, as you perfectly well know.”

  She let go of me then. Her weakly falling hands sketched the shape of helplessness.

  “What I’ve been concealing wouldn’t make things better. And now it’s even ...” She bit her lip in misery. “Poor, poor Tansy. She must never know.”

  “Tell me, Gwen.”

  I took her hand and led her towards the bed. She followed me meekly.

  We sat side by side, and I urged her again. “Tell me.”

  She said very simply, and with a touching dignity: “I want to tell you, Kim. For two years now I’ve been holding this thing inside myself. It has not been easy, my dear.”

  For a third time I said, “Tell me.”

  “I think I can trust you ...”

  At that moment all thought of my problem with Jane was drained from my mind. I was enclosed within a bubble of time, coaxing a desolate woman to shed some of her agony. A woman I wanted to help.

  “Tell me ...”

  She squared her drooping shoulders and carefully lifted my hand from hers, as if she couldn’t presume to keep it there. I waited, and at last she spoke.

  “I pushed Brian into the water.”

  “You ... ?” The questions piled on to my tongue too fast to be voiced. “What do you mean?”

  Gwen’s human need to share a burden took control. Now she was anxious to talk.

  “I didn’t mean to do it, Kim. He made me so angry, you see, and I grabbed at him. But he was drunk, like I said, and he stumbled and fell into the water.”

  “But ... but how could he have drowned?”

  “That’s what I can’t understand. I imagined a cold dowsing like that would sober him up, so I walked off and left him there. I wanted to teach him a lesson. But something must have happened—I don’t know what...”

  She was sobbing without lowering her eyes from mine, and somehow that made it all the more tragic.

  “Bill Wayne found the body in the morning,” she went on. “It was a terrible shock when I heard. I didn’t for a moment imagine Brian wouldn’t get out all right. You do believe me, don’t you, Kim?”

  What else could I do but nod and reassure her? She looked older than her sister now, more lost than Tansy ever seemed.

  “I’d better know the whole story, Gwen.”

  “Yes.”

  But she didn’t go on, I got a feeling that her hesitation was due to some new sense-of shame. And I was right.

  “I must have a drink first, Kim,” she muttered with furtive determination. “I simply must.”

  “No, not now, Gwen.”

  “Yes, now.”

  She was staring down at her joined hands, at the fingers nervously flexing. Suddenly she looked me straight in the eye.

  “I know I drink too much, Kim. I didn’t before ...”

  I softened. “I’ll go down and get you something. Wait here for me.”

  The house seemed empty as I ran down the stairs. But then, coming faintly from the music room at the far end of the hall, I heard Corinne’s voice. She was singing.

  Quietly, I closed the door of the drawing room behind me. I guessed it didn’t matter much to Gwen what particular form of alcohol she swallowed. The first bottle to hand was gin. I poured an unmeasured dose and tossed in a splash of tonic. I hustled back across the room, slid into the hall and made for the stairs.

  A quiet voice, silk-smooth with sarcasm, floated at me from behind.

  “That’s right, Miss Bennett. We want you to feel quite free to help yourself.”

  I jumped, nearly spilling the outsize portion of gin. Corinne was watching me with a wicked smile of triumph.

  “There’s always a selection of drinks put out—but of course you know that already.”

  “But this isn’t ...” What could I say? That Gwen was upstairs, so badly shaken that she needed a stiff drink to pull her round?

  The best I could manage on the spur of the moment was to pretend to take Corinne at the value of her deceitful face. So I smiled warmly, thanked her, and went on upstairs.

  Gwen grabbed at the glass and swigged half the gin in a couple of gulps. She paused, and looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry but I needed a lift.”

  I didn’t explain just how much her lift had cost me in reputation.

  Fascinated, I watched the remainder of the gin follow the first half. Gwen put down the drained glass regretfully. She was beginning to look faintly better.

  “Brian was a louse,” she announced abruptly. “Everyone knew that. Even Tansy.”

  “Then why does she get so upset whenever his name is mentioned?”

  “Poor Tansy
feels guilty. Guilty because she couldn’t love her son. There was just nothing lovable about him. Even as a small child he was a nasty deceitful little brute.”

  I said, a bit pompously, “Whatever he may have been, he couldn’t have deserved to die so young.”

  Gwen took me up on that.

  “I tell you, it was an accident. We’d had an awful row earlier, and I ran into him again when I went out for some air. We met down there on the road between the ponds. He was coming back from the pub, and immediately started on me again.”

  Behind those great goggle spectacles, slow tears were filling her eyes. She left them to trickle away as though entirely unaware.

  “Brian had a vicious tongue, Kim. An evil tongue.”

  “Just tell me what happened, Gwen. I’m not asking what he said.”

  ‘“You might as well know it all. I think I’ve no shame left now. Perhaps I strike everybody the way he described me.”

  She stood up and began wandering around the room, fingering ornaments. Then she suddenly stopped this nervous prowling and stood still, her back to me.

  “He called me a frustrated old virgin. He said if I could persuade a man to go to bed with me, which he took leave to doubt, it might make a human being of me.”

  She bent her head and pulled off her glasses to free the flood of tears,

  I went over to her quickly and put my arm round her shoulders. “It was a wickedly cruel thing to say.”

  She sobbed for a minute, and then I witnessed a display of iron self-control. Her voice was defiant.

  “He said it to annoy me, out of sheer spite. It hurt me so very much because it’s probably true.”

  “‘But you mustn’t let it hurt you, Gwen,” I pleaded helplessly. “I mean….”

  “I gave him such a little push,” she went on. “I couldn’t believe it when he fell back into the pond. He wasn’t by any means a small man. He must have tripped, or slipped on some mud or something. I don’t know.”

  “But, Gwen, why didn’t you tell all this to the police? Or the coroner?”

  “How could I?” She reached behind her for the support of the mantelpiece. “I would have been charged with ... heaven knows what. Manslaughter, I suppose.”

  “But it was an accident.”