“Surely you hadn’t anything to tell them!”
Miss Wills turned upon Jeanie a pained, would-be ingenuous look.
“Well, I just told him what I’d heard. In the stable. Last Friday. Not quite a week ago. And it seems like a century.”
“Well?” asked Jeanie abruptly, for Tamsin’s circumlocutory style annoyed her.
“It was in the stable-loft, you see. I was taking milk to Sarah’s kittens. It was in the evening, about five o’clock, just growing dark. I heard somebody come into the stable below. I was just going to get down the ladder when I heard Mr. Molyneux say: Marjorie, you mustn’t do this. Really, my dear, you mustn’t. Can’t you see how foolish it is? He was speaking quite kindly, but strongly, you know, as if he was annoyed and didn’t want to show it too much. And then I heard Miss Dasent, and she sounded very emotional, and she said: Oh, Robert, I had to! Don’t be angry with me! And he said: I’m not angry, but really you can’t do this sort of thing. If you want to see me, you can come to the house, Marjorie. I suppose you think that I oughtn’t to have listened, Miss Halliday, but what could I do? Go down the ladder and burst in on them?”
“I suppose not.”
“I’m so glad you understand! Well—and then she kind of burst out crying and became very hysterical and said she was miserable because she hadn’t seen him, and what had she done to make him cross with her, and all that kind of thing, really quite incoherent! I don’t remember it all. And he said she must pull herself together and not give way to silly fancies. He said: I’m a quarter of a century older than you, my dear, and my romantic days are a long way behind me! Which wasn’t quite true, of course, because Marjorie’s thirty-three if she’s a day! And then he said half-jokingly: And anyway, I’m Agnes’s property, you know, my dear. And she burst out: She doesn’t care for you, she’s heartless! And he said quite angrily: Please don’t talk like that! And then I heard him say more sympathetically: You ought to go away for a holiday, Marjorie. Ask your father to let you go away on a cruise for a month or two. And when you come back we’ll be better friends than ever, and laugh at all this together. And she kind of shouted out: Laugh! How can you be so devilish? And then he went away, and she went on howling to herself, and I crept down the ladder without her noticing me, she was so busy soaking poor Gipsy with her tears.”
There was a pause when Tamsin had brought her narrative to a close. A certain note of gloating triumph seemed to linger on the air, and Tamsin as well as Jeanie seemed to become aware of it, for hastily she added in a voice pitched so mournfully that it was almost lachrymose:
“I can’t tell you, Miss Halliday, how badly I’ve felt about it. I’m so glad you think I did right not to try to conceal it. Though, of course, for Agnes’s sake, I was terribly tempted to.”
“I suppose it was right to tell the police,” conceded Jeanie coldly. “But why tell me?”
Tamsin looked for a second disconcerted, but soon recovered herself and gave a somewhat artificial smile.
“I’m sorry if I’ve bored you, Miss Halliday.”
“You haven’t bored me, exactly. I’m only wondering just why you disliked poor Mr. Molyneux so much that you can get a kick out of repeating that sort of story about him.”
Jeanie’s voice was a little breathless. Her face was burning. The dormant hostility between the two of them awoke fully armed. They glared at one another.
“Really, Miss Halliday, I don’t know why you should take that tone!”
“You’re not going to tell me you didn’t dislike him!”
“I certainly didn’t dislike Mr. Molyneux. But as I’ve already explained, I’m a friend of Agnes’s, and—”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake don’t start all over again!”
“Very well. I’m sorry I ever mentioned the matter.”
“I should think so!”
About to depart indignantly, Jeanie turned, finding a weapon to her hand:
“By the way, what were you doing in the lower Tower room at the time Mr. Molyneux was shot?”
Tamsin looked startled, furious and secretive all in the space of a moment.
‘‘Looking for Sarah. I said so.”
“Why?”
Miss Wills laughed somewhat harshly.
“I am her governess, you know!”
“Yes, but why the Tower?”
“It’s a good look-out place!” said Tamsin defensively. Her dark, pebbly eyes snapped at Jeanie behind their horn-rimmed glasses.
“You certainly get a good view of the orchard from there,” agreed Jeanie.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
Jeanie shrugged her shoulders. She remembered how Sarah had said: Uncle Robert says I’m getting beyond her. I don’t think she’ll be here much longer. She adores Aunt Agnes... Suddenly, under the cold hostile look of those dark eyes, Jeanie felt a shiver pass over her. This was not an abstract thing that they were quarrelling about. Out there in the sunny orchard under the trees, Robert Molyneux had lain dead. Perhaps out of this window, perhaps out of another, the murderer had taken aim: perhaps with one of these very lethal weapons that stood in racks and cases around the room!
Jeanie turned to go. But before she had reached the door, the other girl detained her.
“Don’t go! One moment!” Tamsin cleared her throat, seemed to make a great effort to speak agreeably. “I’ll be frank with you, Miss Halliday! I wasn’t looking for Sarah.”
“No?”
“No. I was—I was curious.”
“Curious? What do you mean?”
“Miss Dasent hadn’t been near Cleedons all the week-end. Mr. Molyneux went riding alone on Sunday. I knew she couldn’t keep away for long. I just wondered whether Diana would become Pomona for the occasion, you know!”
“I see,” said Jeanie coldly.
“I suppose you think it not very nice of me, Miss Halliday? But, after all, I am Agnes’s friend!”
“She is lucky, isn’t she?” commented Jeanie, and closed the door between herself and Tamsin.
Chapter Seven
UNDER SUSPICION
An hour in Agnes’s company made Jeanie quite worn out. Pale and rouged, nervous as a strayed cat, she fidgeted about her bedroom, sitting down and getting up, staring in the mirror, shuddering aside from it, picking up and putting down letters of condolence, books, clothes that she seemed to be already sorting out to make room for a wardrobe of widow’s black. Mentally, she seemed equally at sea, jumping from one subject to another, nervous, inattentive, strained. Only once did Jeanie really succeed in catching her friend’s attention. That was when, remembering Mrs. Barchard’s gossip, she was suddenly inspired to ask:
“By the way, it was at Hunsley, wasn’t it, Agnes, that your father had his living?”
Agnes, who was standing near the fire-place at the moment, doing something to her hair, a silver mirror in her hand, became suddenly still, one hand poised at her little neck, her eyes fixed on the glass.
“Why?”
“Only by a strange coincidence, the former tenant of Yew Tree Cottage—”
Jeanie got no further, for Agnes, whose nerves were evidently very much out of order, started violently and dropped her mirror with a shattering noise on the edge of the steel fender. The glass splintered, the fire-irons fell with a clatter. Agnes, with a sharp sobbing cry, clasped her hands to her head as if driven to despair. She cried shrilly:
“There’ve been other rectors at Hunsley, I suppose, beside my father!”
Jeanie stared at her in amazement.
“Agnes...”
“What? What?”
“I didn’t say—anything! I didn’t finish what I was going to say! How did you know—”
Agnes lowered her clasped hands. She looked oddly frightened. She moistened her lips and uttered defiantly and yet uncertainly:
“You said that that woman’s father was rector of Hunsley too!”
“I didn’t! I was going to, but—”
“You did! Don’t be si
lly, Jeanie! How should I know what you were going to say? You said it!”
“But, my dear, I didn’t!”
“You did! You did!” persisted Agnes, trembling. “Oh, look at this! A broken mirror, on top of everything else! Oh Jeanie, haven’t I got enough to bear without anything more? You did say so! You said, it’s a funny thing, but the former tenant of Yew Tree Cottage said her father was Rector of Hunsley, too!”
Agnes sank down upon her knees and began, sobbing under her breath, to collect the fragments of broken glass. Jeanie stooped in silence to help her. After a moment she was surprised to hear Agnes murmur submissively:
“Perhaps you didn’t, Jeanie. Perhaps you didn’t say so. Only, you see, Jeanie dear, I’ve heard the tale so often before, from lots of people. Her father was a clergyman, it seems. He was Rector of Hunsley at some time or another. I just jumped to what you were going to say. You see?”
Yes, Jeanie saw. She saw the plausibility of this. What she did not see was why Agnes had been in the first place startled into dropping her mirror and asserting so frantically such an obvious untruth.
She stayed the day at Cleedons, at Agnes’s request. Molyneux’s lawyer had arrived, a black-robed costumier seemed mournfully to haunt the upper corridors with armfuls of black clothes, a cousin of Molyneux’s had come to offer consolation and help, letters flooded the entrance hall at every post, and two policemen in plain clothes appeared and disappeared in the garden and orchard.
Agnes went early to bed, and Jeanie looked forward with relief to the prospect of her own home and hearth. She was just letting herself out of the parlour French windows on to the starlit terrace when the movement of one of the tree-like patches of darkness caught her eye, and froze her hand on the latch. It was a still, clear evening, and but for an owl calling, the country was quite silent. Though there was no moon, Jeanie could see the bare branches of trees against the sky. Standing uncertainly, half-fearful, in the doorway, she saw a man a little way down the terrace, his white face in the darkness turned towards her.
“Who’s there?”
The dark figure moved, came towards her.
“I thought you were Agnes. I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“No. I’m Jeanie Halliday.”
“I’m Peter Johnson. I’m terribly sorry I startled you. You see, I thought you were Agnes.”
Jeanie inquired with a faint smile:
“Did you want to startle Agnes, then?”
“I wanted to speak to her,” said the young man inexpressively. He looked extraordinarily pale in the starlight, and lined. Jeanie would hardly have recognised the pleasant carefree youth she had met as Mr. Molyneux’s secretary in the summer.
“I’m afraid you can’t. She’s gone to bed. But come in, won’t you? We’ve met before, you know, in the summer.”
“I remember. Before the tragic happenings of our last chapter.” Peter gave a grim laugh and followed Jeanie back into the room, shutting the French windows on to the frosty terrace. He looked at the remains of the warm log fire.
“I don’t know whether I ought to cross this threshold.”
“You’ve often crossed it before.”
“That was in my respectable days,” said the dark young man with a sort of bitter humour. “Since the summer, I’ve sunk to all sorts of depths.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jeanie lightly, reviving the fire with the bellows.
“Yes, I’ve been a thief for some time,” said Peter meditatively. “And now it seems I’m a murderer as well.”
Jeanie dropped the bellows.
“Let me do that,” said Peter, picking them up. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“You’ve said that before,” said Jeanie a trifle tartly. “And you know, or perhaps you don’t, that there has been a murder here.”
“Oh, I know! That’s the murder I’m suspected of having done. I’m not really a murderer, though. Although I’m just as much a murderer as I am a thief, and everybody thinks I’m a thief.”
“In fact, you’re Little Misunderstood, aren’t you?” said Jeanie crossly. She did not care for melodrama in real life, and Mr. Peter Johnson struck her as unnecessarily histrionic in his behaviour. He made no reply. Glancing at him as he knelt on the hearth-rug and worked the bellows, she half repented her tartness when she observed the lines in his white young face, the smudges beneath his eyes, the lips tensed so as not to tremble.
“What happened to you yesterday?” she asked more gently. He was instantly on the defensive.
“What do you mean?”
“You were here, weren’t you? Sarah said you were.”
“Well, I am still a member of the Handleston Field Club, you know, even though no longer a member of this household!”
Jeanie looked steadily at him. He put down the bellows and looked inimically back at her.
“What, you came all the way up from London to join the Field Club in looking at Grim’s Grave and Black Ellen’s Tower?”
“Well?”
“Never seen them before, had you?”
“Many times.”
“So many times that halfway through the proceedings you got bored and went off to London again. You weren’t here anyway when the police inquiry was going on.”
Peter’s face darkened.
“Thank you, I’ve had all the police inquiry I want at my flat in London.”
“What time did you go off yesterday?”
“I left the house, madam, at about half-past three.”
As soon as you’d had a good look at the medieval kitchen?”
“I didn’t go near the kitchen.”
“Not after coming all the way from London to see it?”
Peter Johnson put down the bellows and stood up. A bright flame rushed up around the log. Standing on the hearth-rug in his overcoat and scarf, Peter looked tall, angry, and formidable. Once again, as with Tamsin Wills, Jeanie felt a little chill of the spirit. Here the two bandied words, as if there were no realities in this peaceful, lovely place: but murder had been a reality in this peaceful, lovely place only yesterday.
Jeanie, sitting in her low chair, looked up at Peter, and suddenly thought how she scarcely knew him, how they were alone together, how somebody unknown had murdered poor Robert Molyneux. She was silent. But Peter replied after a moment:
“The fact is, as you’ve very perspicaciously guessed, Miss Halliday, I didn’t come down here to see the medieval kitchen. No, I came down here to see Mrs. Molyneux.” He paused. “And, having seen her, I went home.”
He lit a cigarette, frowning, and offered one to Jeanie. “No, thank you. Well, it’s funny, but when the police were making their inquiries yesterday, Agnes didn’t say anything about seeing you.”
“It isn’t funny at all. It may be very tragic,” said Peter, looking at her sombrely.
“Why?”
“Well, because I didn’t say anything about it either to the police. When they asked me why I’d come down here yesterday I said I’d come to join the Field Club. I suppose I was a fool. I felt I’d rather leave it to Agnes to clear my character.”
“Well, I’m afraid she didn’t do it, Peter.”
“I might have known she wouldn’t,” said Peter with extreme bitterness. “She let me be thought a thief. She’ll let me be thought a murderer. I wonder whether she’d let me be hanged? I dare say she would, you know. Yes, I’ve no doubt she’d let me be hanged,” said he with a sort of bitter cheerfulness that grated on Jeanie’s ears.
“Aren’t you talking rather nonsense?” protested Jeanie painfully, flushing, for Agnes was her friend. Peter looked at her coldly.
“Am I?”
“Well, can’t you explain? Why did you come down to see Agnes?”
“Certainly I can explain,” said Peter crisply, “if you’ve the patience to listen to me. I don’t know whether you are aware of it, Miss Halliday, but you see before you a member of the criminal classes.”
He paused.
“You take it very calmly, Miss Halliday. I suppose my reputation has lingered on the scene of my crime.”
Jeanie said, quietly:
“I knew you’d left here, of course. I knew there’d been some trouble.”
Peter threw his head back and laughed a rather forced and dreary laugh.
“Some trouble! How charmingly meiotic!”
Jeanie sat up, bristling. The melodramatic young idiot annoyed her.
“Charmingly what?”
“Meiotic. Ladylike. Euphemistic. Understated. Some trouble! Yes, there was some trouble, just a spot. I stole sixty pounds out of the wages safe, dear lady. I was a confidential secretary. I had the combination of the safe where the wages money was kept. I stole sixty pounds of it. Depravity could go no further. Didn’t Agnes tell you about it?”
“No, she hasn’t said anything about you.”
“Surprising!” said Peter with an unpleasant sneer. He added: “And rather ungrateful, too, seeing that I stoic the money to give her. Ingratitude, your name is Agnes. However, I’m even with you now. I’ve divulged the secret. I will not be chivalrous any longer. Chivalry, Jeanie, is a mistake.”
“Of course it is, if it leads you to stealing and telling lies,” responded Jeanie tartly. “Do you really mean to say, Peter, you stole Mr. Molyneux’s money to give to Mrs. Molyneux and then put on a tin halo and let him dismiss you for stealing? Chivalry, indeed! You must have had a fool’s bringing-up!”
Peter said through stiff lips:
“Thank you, but I’ve been suspecting that myself for the last three weeks. You needn’t labour the point.”
“I’m sorry! Only, you must admit, Peter—”
“I do admit it. I was a fool.”
“She’d got herself into difficulties over dress-bills, I suppose. Agnes is very extravagant. I dare say she used to quarrel with her husband about her bills.”
“She certainly did,” agreed Peter, sinking down into a chair and running his hands through his dark hair. “I ought never to have let a good job go for such a fool reason, I see that now. I ought to have told Agnes that if she didn’t tell Mr. Molyneux the truth, I would. But I didn’t realise at the time what it would mean. No reference. No new job. That was really why I came down yesterday. I couldn’t get a job. I couldn’t give Molyneux as a reference, of course, although I’d been here three years. It all seemed too unfair, too absurd! After all, to Mrs. Molyneux it was just a matter of a—a row with her husband. To me, it was my livelihood, my—my career! I thought I could persuade her to tell Mr. Molyneux that—that I wasn’t quite such a hound as he thought me. She was in her room. I slipped a note under the door. After a while she came out and spoke to me in the corridor upstairs. She wouldn’t listen to me. She said—I can see her expression now—she said: But, Peter, what are you talking about? She was wearing a sort of plum-coloured dress. She looked—like a saint. And she could do that. Pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about. When—”
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