“Triangles, Peter?”
“Eyes, you know, and triangles, and flashes of lightning, and cubes, things that make you think. I like art to be serious, Jeanie.”
Jeanie smiled.
“Poor Peter, you won’t find any abstractions here!”
“No. Nature-lovers to a man, I see,” replied Peter sadly as they moved on. “Hullo!”
He paused, with a look of amused attention, before a painting which was certainly very far from the severe abstractions he had been humorously extolling. It was a portrait, one of those skilfully arranged and careful paintings which induce a slight spiritual nausea in others beside ardent modernists. Jeanie glanced at the catalogue. For Hubert Southey, this was quite a daring portrait. The setting was at least unusual. But how he had subdued the brassy glitter of buttercups in a field, the deep blue of summer shadows on grass, to the polite tints of his own studio-bred and timid mind! Poor old Southey, thought Jeanie, with the friendly scorn of the pupil for the teacher.
“Lady in Red Gloves. It’s awfully daring, as a matter of fact, for poor old Harmless Hubert. That little bit of red, you know. I expect he felt awfully dashing putting that together.”
“But, Jeanie, don’t you realise? It’s the Handleston Helen!”
Jeanie started, and looked at the picture with a livelier interest.
“Of course! Mrs. Barchard told me he painted her picture sitting among the buttercups! She’s attractive, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Lots of glamour.”
“Is she a little like somebody I know?”
“Yes,” said Peter at once. “She’s a little—a very little—like you.”
“Like me? Oh no, Peter!”
Jeanie flushed and stared at the portrait, half flattered, for it was of a pretty woman, half irritated, as one is at the thought that one may not, after all, seem quite unique to one’s friends.
“Oh yes, Jeanie! Not really like, just a chance resemblance, but her face is the same shape as yours, and her eyebrows are a little bit the same.”
He spoke seriously, as though he had made a study of Jeanie’s eyebrows, and she blushed still deeper.
“I think she’s a little, weeny bit like—Agnes.”
“Agnes!”
Yes, it was a remote likeness to Agnes Molyneux that Jeanie had seen in the portrait. There was a distinct look of Agnes about the straight delicate nose, the cleft narrow chin.
“I don’t see the slightest resemblance,” said Peter.
“Well, it’s not a very good portrait, anyway,” said Jeanie. “But the buttercups are awfully like buttercups, and the gloves are awfully like gloves, and the brooch is—good Heavens! It’s awfully like a brooch I bought once!”
Jeanie leant forward to have a closer look. Hubert Southey, though a landscape painter by profession, was by nature, his critics often to his disgust remarked, a painter of still-life. His buttercups might be dulled, his sunlight dimmed, and the faces of his sitters stiff with fatigue and strain; but his jewels were jewels that their makers would recognise with pleasure, his gloves were calculated to rouse the enthusiasm of a leather-worker, his hats were models from which milliners might copy and never be in doubt over the choice of straw. He could, in his way, paint.
And he had painted at Valentine Frazer’s white neck a large star-shaped brooch of zircons.
Six years before, when Jeanie had first heard that her beloved Miss Drake was to be married, she had much exercised her youthful mind over the subject of what to give as a wedding present. The school was of course making a presentation, but Jeanie longed to give some personal thing by which Miss Drake could always remember her. And at the Caledonian Market one day in the holidays she had seen just the thing—a star-shaped zircon brooch in a setting of Indian silver of distinctive and charming design. Jeanie had bought it, spending a great deal more than a schoolgirl could properly afford. And Agnes had said that she adored it and could never have a brooch she would like better.
And now that very brooch of glittering zircons was painted at the neck of the Handleston Helen, as Peter had called her. There was a little stone missing from one of the rays, as Jeanie well remembered. Jeanie stared and stared at that painted brooch. The provoking, naughty, if somewhat fixed smile above the brooch drew her glance upwards, the painted eyes twinkled into hers.
“Ah, how do you do, Miss Halliday. I hope that look of dismay doesn’t mean you don’t like my picture?”
Jeanie turned with a little start.
“How are you, Mr. Southey? No, I’m admiring your picture, and so is my friend, Mr. Johnson. He knows the model.”
As she spoke, Jeanie suddenly became acutely aware of the local gossip, and a stupid feeling of embarrassment came over her. She began to utter quickly platitudes about the exhibition. She saw a faint surprise at her manner reflected behind Hubert Southey’s spectacles, and after a few reciprocal compliments upon Jeanie’s work he returned to the subject of his own.
“Yes, rather a new departure for me,” he uttered complacently. “I enjoyed doing it, too. One gets sick of studio portraits, don’t you know. One wants the sunlight.”
Yes, one does, silently commented Jeanie’s professional mind, looking at those buttercups, and one doesn’t get it. Her unprofessional mind noted Hubert Southey’s extraordinary unconcern. Anybody might think from his carefree manner that the man was a regular Don Juan!
“That was a wonderful sitter, too,” went on Hubert Southey, stroking the back of his head. “She had a great capacity for sitting still without losing sparkle, don’t you know.”
He spoke as if regretfully.
“I should have liked,” added he, “don’t you know, to have kidnapped her!” He gave a little laugh at his own daring. His mild eyes behind their horn-rimmed spectacles shone with a boyish and innocent mirth. “Yes, don’t you know, I should have liked to have packed her up among my gear and taken her back to Chelsea!”
“Oh yes?” uttered Jeanie faintly, summoning a responsive smile. Yes, certainly she must revise her careless estimate of Hubert Southey’s character. Why, the old villain seemed positively to be enjoying his own disingenuousness!
“Only,” said the villain, putting the crowning touch to his mendacities, his neat pointed beard fairly twitching with naughty merriment, “what would Dora have said? Eh? What would Dora have said, don’t you know?”
With this piece of daring, he took his leave and went off to greet another of his many friends, leaving Jeanie and Peter gazing after him.
“Dora?” echoed Peter interrogatively.
“Miss Southey.”
“A cool hand, isn’t he, Jeanie? Don’t you know?”
Jeanie smiled, though she felt troubled, too, not liking the slight earthquake feeling of insecurity which accompanies the readjustment of one’s ideas about a respected teacher.
“Yes, indeed he is.”
“Well, I suppose Handleston gossip doesn’t reach as far as Chelsea. He probably doesn’t realise what a Byronic reputation he’s got in these parts.”
Chapter Seventeen
MADAM, WILL YOU WALK?
When Jeanie, about to close her garden gate behind her and go for a lonely walk in Cole Harbour woods, saw a blue-clad stiff figure approaching up the road, she nearly dashed the gate to and ran back up the path to hide. It was Marjorie Dasent, and Jeanie did not want to see her. She did not know how she should greet her. She could not speak to her naturally, knowing what she knew.
But it was too late to retreat. Marjorie hailed her from fifty yards away, and she had to wait at the gate until the other girl came up, her hands thrust into the pockets of her mannish navy jacket, her black felt hat well crammed down on her head. Marjorie looked much as usual. Her rather self-consciously long masculine stride was the same as ever. Her complexion had its usual somewhat wind-nipped, ruddy look. Her greeting to Jeanie was as self-confident, as loud and hearty, as though in some other avatar she had walked the quarter-deck.
“Good afternoo
n! Heel, Caesar!” cried Miss Dasent sternly, somewhat to Jeanie’s surprise. The words, however, were addressed to no illustrious shade, but to a barrel-shaped old black spaniel who had been doing his best to keep up with his owner’s stride and now came sniffing and wagging hopefully towards Jeanie as though he thought she might set a kinder pace.
“You walking my way, Miss Halliday? Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it? Aren’t dogs a nuisance?”
“I’ve always thought so,” replied Jeanie with sincerity.
Marjorie smiled, for in her innocence she thought Jeanie was indulging in facetiousness. Mechanically returning the smile, Jeanie thought: Is this the girl I’m suspecting of murder? Is this the girl whose rifle was found hidden under a culvert? The girl who saw Robert Molyneux die and said nothing about it? It seemed impossible to believe such things of this innocent, middle-aged child, with her wind-nipped, high-bridged nose, mild diffident blue eyes and circumscribed set of ideas! Perhaps a shadow fell upon Jeanie’s face and Marjorie saw it, for her smile faded. She said uncertainly:
“I really don’t know what I’d do without Caesar. It’s rather lonely for me now that Father’s getting so old. Caesar’s practically my only companion. You’d probably think me quite demented if you heard me talking to Caesar sometimes.”
A little irritated by this dog-talk, Jeanie agreed.
“I expect I should.” She eyed the shuffling spaniel without enthusiasm as he sniffed at a rabbit-hole and decided that it was too much trouble to do more than sniff. “He must be a perfect store-house of interesting information. Do tell me what you talk to him about.”
Marjorie looked at Jeanie dubiously. Her good-humoured blue eyes seemed of a sudden cautious and grey. She said with doubtful jocosity:
“Oh, all the secrets of my life, you know!”
“Such as?”
“Well!” Miss Dasent laughed uneasily, stealing a hurt, frightened look at her unresponsive companion, who was swinging along at her side at a pace that almost outmatched her own. “All sorts of things! I don’t know!”
Jeanie contemplated the obese and unhappy creature labouring along in front of them. She was irritated and embarrassed. She did not want Marjorie Dasent’s company. She wanted to be alone. She hated walking along with a person at whose eyes she dared not look for fear of the distrust and horror that might be read in her own. Her resentment made her take the cold plunge that the turn of the conversation suggested.
“Did you tell him about the rifle you hid under the culvert the day poor Molyneux was murdered?”
There was a silence. Still Marjorie swung along and still Jeanie swung along beside her, and still the spaniel sniffed desirously at the road and dragged himself past delights in the pursuit of duty. They walked thus in silence for a moment. Then Marjorie said with a great gulp, slowing down:
“Superintendent Finister knows about that!” A little muscle worked in her cheek. “He knows I didn’t do it, though! He doesn’t suspect me! He’d have arrested me if he did!”
“Not necessarily,” said Jeanie brutally, also slowing down. “He might be keeping you in cold storage.”
Caesar, released from duty, found a horse-dropping and occupied himself voluptuously with it. A car passed and the two ladies moved towards a field-gate and stood on the grass verge and faced one another. Marjorie was flushed, hostile, hot-eyed, Jeanie pale, cold and distrustful.
“Why do you speak to me like this, Miss Halliday?” asked Marjorie with a sort of trembling resentment.
“I don’t know why I’m speaking to you at all,” said Jeanie gloomily. “It can’t do any good. That was your cigarette-end that was found in the lambing-shed wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Oh, I was a fool. I know I was a fool!” said Miss Dasent brokenly. “But, Miss Halliday! You can’t—you can’t think that I—that I—”
“Why on earth not? I do think it!’’
“But I—but I was pals with Robert Molyneux!” protested Marjorie with a trembling chin. “How can you? Oh, I know I was a fool and hid my rifle! I lost my head, I saw he was dead, I was terrified!”
Her large hand positively dragged at Jeanie’s arm in her attempt to carry conviction, to make Jeanie turn and look at her.
“Miss Halliday! You can’t—nobody could think I wished Robert any harm! We were the best, the best of pals!”
She wept.
“Why didn’t you come forward at the inquest?”
“How could I? I’d been a fool and hidden my rifle. I thought I’d go back one night and fetch it, and nobody would ever know I was in the orchard that day. Only, whenever I went to fetch it, there seemed to be policemen about. Or people I was afraid were policemen. I was afraid to get it in case I was seen! Oh, I’ve been through Hell!”
“What made you hide it in the first place? Wasn’t it a frightfully stupid thing to do?”
“Yes!” whispered Marjorie, wiping her eyes on a large handkerchief. “But I was so frightened. Nobody knew I was there. In the lambing-shed. And with a rifle. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. How could I have proved that—that I only wanted to look at him? Just to look at him and to say good-bye in my own mind to—oh, to some silly thoughts I’d had! How could I have proved it? How could I have explained even? Without making things seem horrible that weren’t horrible at all? I was watching Mr. Molyneux pruning his trees. I was saying good-bye to a lot of nonsense in my heart, and resolving to be sensible. And suddenly I saw him falling out of the tree, and I realised that there’d been a shot. I—it seemed ages, years before I could move. I felt as if I’d imagined the whole thing. As if it couldn’t really have happened and if I shut my eyes and looked again there he’d be still on his ladder. At last I went as near him as I dared. I saw the bullet-hole in his temple. I knew that he was dead. I was terrified! I couldn’t wait and be found there! I couldn’t take my rifle with me, I was frightened—oh, of everything!”
“Sarah saw you hide it.”
“Sarah? Oh, poor kid,” stammered Marjorie. She wept a little, leaning on the field-gate, and then polished her eyes and face thoroughly on her gentlemanly white handkerchief.
“I’m sorry to make such a fool of myself. Come here, Caesar! Bad, dirty dog!”
Caesar, disconcerted perhaps by his owner’s gruff broken tone, paused for several last sniffs before lumbering up, and received a half-hearted welt over the back which made him wag his tail even more amiably than before.
“What are they going to do?” asked Marjorie. “I go on and pretend everything’s all right and nothing’s going to happen. Only, how do I know whether Superintendent Finister believed me yesterday when I explained? I had to tell him things I could hardly bear even to think of! And even then, how do I know he believed me?”
A sudden horrible thought seemed to strike her.
“How do I know you believe me? Perhaps you don’t!”
She waited for a protest, but Jeanie did not make it.
“Perhaps nobody would believe me! After all I was there, in the lambing-shed, secretly, and with a rifle. And I’d been very unhappy. And that awful man Fone said at the inquest that Robert was facing towards Cleedons when he was shot. Making the coroner say the shot must have come from the direction of the lambing-shed! Who’d believe me after that?”
“Why? Didn’t it?”
“Didn’t what?” asked Marjorie, blowing her nose. “Didn’t the shot come from the lambing-shed direction, then? Was Mr. Molyneux facing towards the house when he was shot, or was he not?”
“I don’t know,” stammered Marjorie. “I couldn’t see him, then. The boughs of the tree were between him and me. And I heard the shot without noticing—you know how one does when it’s quite an ordinary noise that one’s accustomed to. I was so surprised at seeing him fall I didn’t realise for a moment that there’d been a shot, my first thought was he’d been taken ill. I suppose if that man Fone says he was facing the house when the shot came, he was facing the house. Only, that means the shot must have come from quite near me,
and I should have thought I would have heard it instantly. I should have thought it would have quite startled me.”
“Didn’t it?”
“No. I—I’m telling you, I hardly noticed it until afterwards.”
“I heard it plainly enough in the stable.
“The worst part of all this for me,” cried Marjorie suddenly, “the horrible part, is, that I’m thinking all the time of myself and what may happen! Whether the police will find the murderer in time to save me from being arrested! I think so much about it that I haven’t time to be properly sorry about poor Robert. It’s horrible! And by the time all this is over and settled, I shall have got used to him not being there, and perhaps I shan’t be able to be properly sorry!”
“Being sorry doesn’t do anybody any good. I shouldn’t worry about that,” said Jeanie, and turned off at the gate into Cole Harbour woods. And as she walked up the foot-path she wondered whether Marjorie Dasent had it in her to be “properly sorry” for Robert Molyneux’s death. She had her pal Robert for ever enshrined now in her probably somewhat embellished memories. Perhaps that was where she wanted him. Perhaps, in fact, in spite of her very natural denials, that was where she had put him...
Chapter Eighteen
A DISTURBING VISITOR
Jeanie had her walk in the woods and returned to make herself an omelette for lunch and a cup of tea. She was just pouring the water on to the tea when a loud sudden knock on the door caused a spurt of water to jerk from the spout of the kettle. Conscious that her face was flushed by the fire and her hair untidy, she was not in the mood for visitors, but putting down the kettle and tucking in a stray lock of hair, she went to the door.
Superintendent Finister stood on the door-step, watching a robin hop from clod to clod of the turned earth. Jeanie felt an odd little twinge of nervousness at the sight of him. Her feelings towards the police had undergone a change since her meeting with Finister and Sarah on Grim’s Grave. She knew vicariously now a little of the fear of the law-breaker. It was a queer sensation, to feel afraid of a policeman!
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