Ladies’ Bane

by Patricia Wentworth

  Miss Silver coughed.

  “Without admitting any reality in these phenomena or pronouncing an opinion as to whether they have their origin in trickery or in the vagaries of the human mind, they can at times be extremely unpleasant.”

  Miss Bowden nodded vigorously.

  “I consider myself a strong-minded woman, and so, I suppose, do you. At this moment, at twenty minutes past eleven in the morning, sitting here in your nice bright room, I have a perfectly healthy and civilized disbelief in ghosts, spectres, apparitions, ghouls, vampires, and curses. But put me in a haunted room at midnight, with doors opening by themselves and the candle guttering and going out, and I don’t pretend for a moment that I shouldn’t probably scream the house down. It’s all atmosphere, and whether the thing can get you to believe in it or not. I’ve seen a man die of a curse in Africa. He believed in it like mad, and he just lay down and died, like an animal will if it’s been too badly frightened. And that brings me back to Allegra. I want to know whether anything is frightening her. She is the kind that would be easy enough to scare. Gentle, timid kind of creature with a soft voice and pretty ways. Not half the pluck and go and spirit of her sister Ione.”

  “There is a sister?”

  “Yes-unmarried-Ione Muir. I hear she’s on a visit to Allegra now. First time for two years, but she’s been out in the States. Made rather a hit there with monologues, sketches-you know the sort of thing. I’m told they went quite wild about her. Well, she’s been back some time now, but until a few days ago she hadn’t so much as laid eyes on Allegra. That’s one of the things that’s been worrying me. She’s been going down there half a dozen times, and they’ve always put her off. And Allegra’s been coming up to meet her in London, but there’s always been a telegram or a last minute call to say she couldn’t come. I ran into Ione on Bond Street and dragged it all out of her. I just said to her, ‘Look here, you can make this hard work for me and very irritating for yourself, but I intend to know what is going on about Allegra, and you can’t put me off. I shall just go on until I find out, so it will be a whole lot easier if you come across and tell me what you know.’ ”

  Miss Silver picked up her knitting again.

  “And then she told you?”

  Josepha Bowden nodded.

  “Told me I was a human battering-ram and I ought to be ashamed of myself! So then we went in and had some coffee, and she told me all about it. Not that there was really anything to tell-only about being put off, and Allegra never turning up when she’d made an appointment. Once we got the ice broken, I think she was glad enough to talk-I could see she was just as worried as I was. So it was a considerable relief to me to hear that her visit to Allegra had actually come off at last.”

  Miss Silver looked thoughtfully across her rapidly moving needles.

  “Since Miss Muir is now staying at the Ladies’ House and will be able to give you a much fuller account of the situation there than I can possibly hope to do, are you sure that you really wish to engage my services?”

  She got one of those hearty laughs.

  “I shouldn’t have come if I didn’t! I want the village talk, the village gossip. I want the Falconer angle. Elizabeth Moore says you’re a wonder at getting people to talk. Well, that’s what I want. Villages can be as tight as clams. I sent a man down to snoop around, didn’t get a thing, and he wouldn’t if he’d stayed there a year instead of a day. But one of Miss Falconer’s p.g.’s pottering round with her, buying oddments, and going to church on Sundays-well, that’s different. Especially if you could carry on a spot of knitting.”

  Miss Silver, inured by now to Miss Bowden’s informal mode of conversation, smiled indulgently and remarked that she never went anywhere without her knitting.

  “And your fees?”

  Miss Silver named a sum which only a few years before she would have considered alarming. It was accepted with a careless,

  “That’s all right. I’ve got plenty of money-a lot more than I shall ever use. When you spend most of your time with all your worldly goods in a couple of saddlebags you don’t get cluttered up with possessions like the stay-at-homes do. I shall probably settle down, if I ever do, in a tent on a bit of ground that I overlooked when I was selling the rest of the land my forebears managed to hang round my neck. It’s got a nice spring on it, and if I find a tent too cold I can always make it a caravan.” She got up out of her chair and held out a strong brown hand. “I think you’ll do the job all right, and I’d like you to go down as soon as you can. Miss Falconer is on the telephone, and I suggest you ring her up and say something on the lines of a friend of yours had met someone who had stayed with her in the summer, and would she by any chance be prepared to take you in? You had better mention references, because she won’t take anyone without them.”

  Miss Silver smiled. She would be able to offer some quite unexceptionable references which could be verified on the telephone. Having taken down a few more particulars, she suffered a very hearty handshake from Miss Bowden, who thereupon departed with every appearance of being very well satisfied with her morning’s work.

  As soon as the front door had closed upon her Miss Silver drew the table-telephone towards her and dialled Trunks.

  CHAPTER 13

  The dining-room of the George Hotel at Wraydon is very strictly in the tradition of its many Georgian and Victorian counterparts. It has a row of tall windows curtained in olive green and rather heavily screened by yellowing net. The tables-it does have separate tables-are solidly constructed, and shrouded to within an inch or two of the floor.

  The table-cloths have seen better days. Sometimes there is a vase containing a couple of paper flowers and a sprig of evergreen. In summer the flowers may even be real if rather shabby-genteel, but always, and where you cannot possibly help seeing it, there is a massive ash-tray which advertises some well known brand of table-water. From the walls engravings representing the royalties and politicians of a bygone day gaze benignly or severely upon the scene. Queen Victoria as a smiling young woman with pretty little ears just peeping out from demurely banded hair. Albert, the Prince Consort, in the days when he was one of the handsomest young men in Europe. The great Gladstone, hatchet-faced and gloomy. The Marquess of Salisbury in a bushy beard. There is something reposeful about the distance between these fading portraits and the really fiery passions which once raged around the men who posed for them.

  Ione sat with her back to a window and laughed at Jim Severn’s apologies for not having been able to find a better place for lunch.

  “We ought to have gone out into the country.”

  “Well, it’s a very good thing we didn’t, isn’t it? I’m not really bigoted about the country when it’s pouring with rain. Cousin Eleanor lives in a village, you know, so I’ve always had plenty of it, and frankly, when it comes to a wet Sunday I’d just as soon be somewhere else. Now here we can go back into the great Victorian age and be as leisurely as we like. We haven’t any trains to catch, and I’ve got a lot of things I want to talk to you about.”

  A middle-aged waitress came over to them and took their order. When she had gone he said,

  “I’ve got a lot to talk to you about too.”

  “Who is going to start?”

  “Would you like to?”

  She shook her head, smiling.

  “Not particularly. It’s the man’s business to lead off, really.”

  He leaned towards her across the table and said,

  “How much does your sister really want to live in that house?” Ione looked at him composedly.

  “I don’t think she wants to live in it at all. I should hate it myself, and I think it’s all wrong for Allegra. She isn’t strong, and the place frightens her.”

  “Then why-”

  “Oh, it’s Geoffrey. You can’t have talked to him for five minutes without seeing that he’s in love with the house-besotted about it. He makes a joke of it, but that is only on the surface. He can hardly make himself stop talking a
bout it, and I don’t believe he ever stops thinking of it.”

  It was curious how easily she could talk to him. He had come to Bleake to furnish Mr. Sanderson with an opinion as to the structural soundness and general condition of the Ladies’ House considered as a suitable investment for Allegra’s trustees, yet neither he nor she was talking about it from that angle. It was the personal and private aspect of the case which was presenting itself. Without a word of explanation they had between them the two things which Ione would not have believed she could discuss with a stranger-Allegra’s state, and the anxiety to which it was giving rise.

  The arrival of the waitress with two plates of pink tomato soup gave both of them pause. Jim Severn thought, “It’s none of my business. Why didn’t I hold my tongue?”, and Ione, “but he isn’t a stranger. I’ve known him always-at least that’s what it feels like.”

  The soup was hot, and surprisingly, it wasn’t out of a tin. Ione guessed at home-bottled tomatoes and thought that she would like to have the recipe. She smiled and said,

  “Someone told me the food here was good. It was the daily maid from the village, Florrie Bowyer. She said the cook here was her aunt, and she had been in very good places but she liked her independence. And the other day, when she thought of having a room and going out daily just to special people, the manager asked her to marry him, so she is staying on. He lost his wife in the autumn, and she is very fond of his little girl, so she is going to take him and stay.”

  He was laughing.

  “How on earth did you get all that?”

  “Oh, Florrie likes talking.”

  “Does she talk to your sister? Was it she who frightened her about the house?”

  Ione nodded.

  “What did she tell her about it?”

  “Oh, some story about the house being called Ladies’ Bane because whoever was mistress there would lose what she cared for most in the world. Allegra isn’t in a state to have that sort of thing said to her.”

  “All these old houses have stories about ghosts and curses. The Ladies’ House hasn’t got a ghost, I suppose?”

  “I haven’t heard of one, but I wouldn’t be surprised. What Allegra wants is a nice bright modern house with lots of windows and no history.”

  The waitress changed their plates and brought them each a helping of roast duck cooked to a turn. There was apple sauce, deliciously sharp, cauliflower in a creamy sauce, and little potato balls cooked to a golden brown but soft inside. Jim Severn said,

  “Well, your Florrie was right about one thing, the aunt is certainly a heaven-born cook. This is the sort of food which I thought had perished from the earth. Comforting to realize that it lingers here and there.” Then, without any perceptible pause or change of voice, “You know, if you feel as you have just given me to understand about your sister living at the Ladies’ House, it is all too easy. You have only to go to Sanderson-is he your trustee as well as your sister’s?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Well, all you’ve got to do is to go to him and tell him what you’ve just told me. If you say the place gives you the creeps-”

  She looked up quickly.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said you hated it.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Well, does it, or doesn’t it?”

  She looked away, frowning.

  “Well, it does-but I don’t know that I should be justified-” She bit her lip. “You see, Geoffrey is so frightfully keen. I should feel the worst kind of doublecrosser if I did it behind his back. And if I tell him I’m going to go to Mr. Sanderson to try to and put him off, well, I don’t see any way out of it except one of those nasty family rows which are never quite patched up. And I can’t have that, because of Allegra.”

  After a little he said,

  “I see-” He was thinking that she had an unusually delicate sense of honour, and then wondering if it wasn’t just a little too delicate-quixotic. He couldn’t make up his mind. There was, of course, another way. He said rather abruptly,

  “Sanderson will surely talk to Mrs. Trent herself. I shouldn’t think he could fail to discern that the house doesn’t appeal to her.”

  Ione said,

  “I don’t know. She-she is very devoted to Geoffrey, you know, and very much under his influence. She is gentle, and rather timid. If she is fond of someone she will do almost anything they want her to do. She has always been like that. If Geoffrey wants the Ladies’ House, it is no use supposing for a moment that she will tell Mr. Sanderson she doesn’t want to live there. It’s beyond her, and it’s better to make up one’s mind to it. I suppose you can’t say anything that would put Mr. Sanderson off?”

  He shook his head.

  “I shall have to give an honest professional opinion. We’ve left the roof till Monday, but as far as the rest of the building is concerned it is remarkably sound. They knew how to build in those old days. It has been continually lived in and looked after ever since, and the American’s modern conveniences have been admirably contrived. My uncle drew the plans himself, and I must say he made a marvellous job of it. So unless something quite unforeseen crops up in the roof I shall have to submit a very favourable report.”

  Ione drew a long breath.

  “I shall just have to tell Geoffrey that I don’t think the Middle Ages are good for Allegra’s nerves. He won’t like it, and he’ll think I’m all the interfering sisters-in-law rolled into one, but it can’t be helped.”

  The waitress changed their plates again. She put down what looked like a piece of real English cheese and a dish of homemade biscuits. She also produced some quite admirable coffee.

  It was over the cheese and the coffee that Jim Severn said suddenly,

  “You’ll never guess who I ran into downstairs in the coffeeroom having a snack.”

  “Someone I know?”

  “Well-” his voice sounded amused-“someone you have talked to.”

  “With you?”

  “With me.”

  Something like a small cold draught drew in from the glass of the window behind her. She had not noticed it before. And Jim Severn was saying,

  “You’ve even heard him sing. That was how I recognized him. He was drinking a quite horrible brew of cocoa laced with whisky, which he tells me he finds very sustaining, and bursting at intervals into ‘The Bluebells of Scotland.’ ” Ione knew why she had felt cold. She was back in that horrible night of fog, following the man whom she had just heard bargaining over the price of a life, and it was “The Bluebells of Scotland” that he had whistled and sung as he clattered with his stick along parapet and balustrade. She caught her breath sharply and said,

  “Oh, no!” And then, “You didn’t say anything about me-”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t know that I should have spoken to him, but he looked straight at me and waved a hand. I thought he recognized me. The gas-lamp out in the street was quite bright when he went away at three o’clock in the morning, and he could have seen me by it, but as it turned out, he was just being matey and didn’t know me from Adam. By the time I had tumbled to this I had already addressed him as Professor MacPhail, and he was busy swearing me to secrecy.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. There must have been quite a lot of whisky in that cocoa, because the tears were running down his face. He said it was a matter of his professional reputation, and got off quite a piece about the unguarded tongue, and discretion being the mother of safety. ‘Twa strangers in a fog, and how was it possible to suspect that I was to come across either of them again! The tongue of truth has aye been mine-except in the way of my professional career. And what would hinder that truthful tongue from giving the name with which I was borrn-and not one to be ashamed of. No, no-a decent name and a decent family, the MacPhails. But-’ here he buttonholed me and diffused a cloud of whisky-‘but, for prrofessional purposes the name is Regulus Mactavish-Prrofessor Regulus M
actavish. And for the hoardings and the theatre bills The Great Prospero!’ ”

  The imitation was very well done. Ione should have laughed, but there was no laughter in her. She felt a cold horror, and she had turned so pale that Jim Severn stretched out his hand across the table and said,

  “What is it-is anything wrong?”

  “I don’t know-”

  He left his seat and came to sit beside her.

  “My dear, what is it?”

  She put a cold hand into his warm one.

  “I’ll tell you-in a minute. I’m probably being silly.”

  He filled up her coffee-cup and pushed it over to her with his free hand.

  “You’d better drink this whilst it’s hot.”

  When she had drunk the coffee she said,

  “Jim, I don’t want to stay here-I don’t want that man to see me-I don’t want him to know I’m here. I’ll wait in the ladies’ room while you settle up and get the car. I won’t come downstairs until I see you in the hall, and if the coast is clear you can nod your head and then go straight out to the car. I don’t want him to see us together.”

  The next few minutes went as slowly as any Ione had known in all her life. When she came to the head of the stairs, Jim Severn was not in sight. A little man with a bald head came out of one of the side doors and tapped the large old-fashioned barometer which hung in the hall, after which he plunged down a dark passage and was seen no more. A woman in a streaming mackintosh pushed the swing-door at the entrance and came in in a very hesitating manner. She stood and dripped impartially upon the strip of red carpet and the shabby brown linoleum on either side of it, shifting her position from time to time and looking about her in a depressed and helpless manner. After some three or four minutes she appeared to lose heart altogether and wandered back through the swing-door into the rain.

  There was one of those times which are probably not so long drawn out as they appear. Ione had begun to have a dazed impression that nothing was ever going to happen again, when Jim Severn came quickly in through the swing-door, looked up, nodded briefly, and turning on his heel, went out again.