Miss Silver Comes To Stay

by Patricia Wentworth

  Miss Silver coughed, and enquired whether Fancy had communicated these interesting particulars to Superintendent Drake. An outraged flush deepened the wild rose colour under the delicate skin.

  “Oh, no, Miss Silver, I didn’t! They’ve got a way of making you say things before you know you’ve done it, but I didn’t tell him what Carr said-I wouldn’t do that!”

  Carr Robertson having gone out directly after lunch, Miss Silver had no opportunity of interviewing him. She considered that on the whole she had enough to think about. Making her way across the Green, she observed that Mr. Ainger had emerged from the Vicarage gate and was taking the path which skirted the village pond and came out a mere stone’s throw from the gate of the White Cottage. He might be going to visit someone in the row of cottages alluded to by Bessie Crook, or he might be going to call upon Miss Rietta Cray. If this were the case, she hoped he would be tactful. In her experience men were very rarely tactful-men in love practically never. The Vicar was said to be in love with Miss Cray. If she had been in love with him, it was probable that they would have married years ago. If she were not, then the last thing she would desire at this moment was an emotional scene. Miss Silver shook her head slightly as she walked. With every esteem for the manly virtues, and a good deal of indulgence towards the manly failings, it had often occurred to her that in moments of stress a man could be dreadfully in the way.

  Something of the same feelling afflicted Rietta Cray as she opened the door to her visitor. He had made for it in a purposeful manner, sounded a vigorous tattoo with the knocker, and immediately upon Rietta making her appearance he had taken her by the arm and marched her into the sitting-room, enquiring in a loud and angry voice,

  “What is all this nonsense?” Then, as the light fell upon her face and he saw how blanched and strained it was, he caught her hands in his and went on more gently, “My dear, my dear-you mustn’t take it like this. No one but a preposterous blundering fool could possibly connect you in any way-”

  His voice had mounted again-a fine organ well suited to the pulpit. At such close quarters Rietta found it a little overpowering. He was still holding her hands. She withdrew them with difficulty and said,

  “Thank you, Henry.”

  “I never heard anything so outrageous! Just because you knew the man a quarter of a century ago!”

  The words sounded bleakly on Rietta’s ear. A quarter of a century-how sere, how dry, how melancholy it sounded. She forced a faint smile.

  “You make me feel like Methuselah.”

  He brushed that aside with an emphatic gesture.

  “Just because you knew the fellow all those years ago!”

  “Not quite that, Henry. I’m afraid there’s more to it than that. You see, I was there talking to him not very long before it must have happened. We-” she hesitated-“well, we quarrelled, and I came away and left my coat behind me. When I saw it again it was-rather horribly stained. A stupid attempt was made to get the stains out, and-well the police found it all wet, and they have taken it away. I don’t see how they can help suspecting me. Poor James made a will in my favour when we were engaged. He showed it to me last night and told me he had never made another. Mrs. Mayhew was listening at the door, and she heard what he said. You see, they were bound to suspect me. But I didn’t do it, Henry.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.” He ran his hands through his thick fair hair and made it stand on end. “You must have the best advice-you must see a solicitor at once. You say your coat was stained when you saw it again. How did you see it again? Someone must have brought it to you. Was it Carr?”

  “Henry, I can’t tell you anything more.”

  “You’re shielding someone. You wouldn’t shield anyone but Carr-not in a murder case. Do you know what they’re saying? Mrs. Crockett told my sister. Dagmar knows how much I object to gossip, but she thought she ought to tell me. They’re saying that it was James Lessiter who ran away with Carr’s wife. Is that true? Are you shielding Carr?”

  “Henry-please-”

  “Is it true?”

  Those bright blue eyes of his were fixed upon her in a very angry and compelling manner. She said in a tired, flat voice,

  “Carr didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  She stepped blindly back until she arrived at a chair. If she had to go on standing she would fall. The room and Henry were beginning to come and go in a baffling mist. She sat down and closed her eyes.

  And then in a moment Henry was on his knees beside her, kissing her hands, accusing himself, protesting his undying devotion.

  “You’ve never wanted it, but you need it-Rietta, you do need it now. You want someone to stand up for you and fight your battles. If you’ll only give me the right-let me give out our engagement and stand by you openly. It would knock out this stupid will motive if it didn’t do anything else. I’ve got quite a lot of money, you know-from my old Uncle Christopher. It really is quite a lot. That would cut out any question of motive. And I wouldn’t ask you to live with Dagmar-I know she’s difficult. I could make her an allowance. Perhaps she could have this house if you came to the Vicarage.”

  Well might Miss Silver reflect upon the male lack of tact, but on this occasion it had a most salutary effect. The thought of Dagmar Ainger moving into the White Cottage and running it with iron efficiency warmed Rietta with a glow of restorative anger. The mist cleared, the floor became stable, the colour came into her cheeks. She sat up and pushed Henry Ainger away.

  “Henry, for heaven’s sake! You can’t propose when I’m fainting!”

  He wasn’t really abashed. He let go of her hands, but remained upon his knees.

  “Well, it seems to have brought you round.” And then, “Oh, Rietta-won’t you?”

  The momentary force went out of her. She spoke the bitter, honest truth.

  “I ought to say thank you, but I can’t. I’m fond of you, but I don’t love you. I can’t even feel grateful to you-I can’t feel anything-I’m too tired. Please go away.”

  He stared at her, dismayed, obstinate.

  “There must be something I can do. Why won’t you let me help you? You must have someone, and there isn’t anyone else. Even if you hate me you might let me help you.”

  That “there isn’t anyone else” bit deep. How deep, she didn’t know till afterwards when the sharp hurt of the moment settled into a desolate aching. She caught her breath.

  “Please, Henry-”

  He got to his feet and stood there looking down on her, bewildered and thwarted.

  “Even if you hate me you might let me help you.”

  Her mood changed. He did want to help her. Why should she hurt him? She said,

  “Oh, Henry, don’t be silly. Of course I don’t hate you- you’re one of my very best friends. And I’m not-not ungrateful-really not. If there’s anything you can do, I’ll let you do it. It’s just that I’m so tired-I’m really too tired to talk. If you would please understand and-and go away-”

  He had just enough sense to go.

  Miss Silver received a telephone call that evening. Mrs. Voycey, answering the insistent bell, encountered a pleasant masculine voice.

  “I wonder if I could speak to Miss Silver. I am an old pupil of hers-Randal March.”

  Miss Silver put down her knitting and approached the instrument.

  “Good evening, Randal. It is nice to hear your voice. A very distinctive one, if I may say so.”

  “Thank you-I will return the compliment. I rang up to say that I have business in Melling tomorrow. I should not like to be there without paying my respects. It is a little difficult for me to fix an exact time, but it would not, I think, be earlier than half past three.”

  “I shall be at home. Mrs. Voycey, I believe, has to go to a meeting in the village hall. She would, I know, be very glad if you would have a cup of tea with me.”

  He said, “Thank you,” and rang off without giving time for the affectionate enqu
iries for his mother and sisters with which she had been about to round off the conversation.

  Returning to the drawing-room and resuming her knitting, she acquainted Mrs. Voycey with the substance of the call. She was obliged to exercise a good deal of delicate tact. There was nothing that Cecilia Voycey would have liked better than to throw over her meeting, remain at home, and entertain the Chief Constable at tea. She had to be dissuaded from this course without allowing it to appear that Randal March’s visit was anything but a respectful gesture to the preceptress of his childhood’s days.

  Knitting briskly and completing the second side of little Josephine’s jacket, Miss Silver condoled with her hostess.

  “It is always so difficult when one would like to be in two places at once. You are the chairman of the Women’s Entertainments Committee, I understand. So important, of course, with the Christmas season coming on, and you would be extremely difficult to replace in the chair. Unless perhaps Miss Ainger-”

  Cecilia Voycey coloured quite alarmingly.

  “My dear Maud!” she exclaimed.

  Miss Silver coughed.

  “I thought, dear, you mentioned that she was efficient.”

  “She is a complete kill-joy,” said Mrs. Voycey in a tone of Christian forbearance. “I have never said that she wasn’t efficient, and I never will, but you can’t entertain people by being efficient, and when we get up a play or an entertainment we like to be able to enjoy ourselves and get some fun out of it. Dagmar Ainger’s idea is to scold everyone till they are sulky, and then organize everything until you might just as well be a lot of chessmen on a board for all the life and go there is left in you. No, no-however much I should like to stay, I can’t risk it. I am the only one who really stands up to her.”

  She continued for some little time to discourse upon the fruitful subject of Miss Ainger, finishing up with,

  “And how Henry stands it, I can’t imagine. But of course he can always say he has got to write a sermon and lock the study door!”

  Miss Silver remarked mildly that interference in other people’s affairs was a sad fault. She then steered the conversation into a channel which led in the most natural manner to Catherine Welby.

  “A very pretty woman. She was with Miss Cray when I arrived this morning. Has she been a widow for long?”

  “Oh, yes.” Mrs. Voycey was full of information. “Of course everyone thought she was settled for life when she married Edward Welby. And then he died and left her with nothing but debts. I really don’t know what she would have done if Mrs. Lessiter hadn’t let her have the Gate House.”

  Miss Silver coughed.

  “I should have thought she might have found Melling dull.”

  “My dear Maud, I have no doubt she does, but there is nowhere else where she could live so cheaply. She did go away during the war, and I believe she had a very pleasant job, driving for someone at the War Office. She used to drive Mrs. Lessiter’s car a good deal. Of course we all thought she would marry again, and I believe she was practically engaged. But she had very bad luck-the man went abroad and was killed- at least that’s the story. And then her job petered out and she came back here. Doris Grover tells Bessie she still gets quite a lot of letters from India, so perhaps something may come of that. And she goes up and down to town quite a lot. It would really be very much better if she were to marry again.”

  Miss Silver began to cast off her neat pale blue stitches.

  CHAPTER 27

  The Chief Constable laid down the papers submitted by Superintendent Drake. He saw before him an unpleasant and harassing day. He found Drake zealous, efficient, and extremely uncongenial. He allowed none of these things to show in face or manner.

  Drake, always ready to break a silence, took up his tale.

  “As you see, the medical report puts the time of death anywhere between nine and eleven. Well, we know he was alive at nine, because Mrs. Mayhew heard him speak about then. If we knew when he had his last meal we could narrow it down a bit, but with a cold supper left, we can’t do better than that. They think it couldn’t have been later than eleven. Well now, Mrs. Mayhew saw that raincoat with the blood on it at a quarter to ten. That means he was dead within half an hour of the time at which Miss Cray admits she was there. If he was dead then, Miss Moore’s statement gives Mr. Robertson an alibi-he was with her until nine-fifty. But I’ve seen Mrs. Mayhew again, and I don’t make out from what she says that there was all that blood on the sleeve when she saw it. She says it was stained round the cuff and she saw the stain. But when I put it to her, was it soaked, she said no it wasn’t, it was just stained. And that would tie up with the scratch Miss Cray had on her wrist. The way I see it now is this. Miss Cray goes home, like she says, at a quarter past nine. Miss Bell corroborates this. We don’t know why she left the raincoat, but leave it she did. My guess is, either there was a quarrel and she came away too angry to notice, or maybe he started to make up to her and she got nervous and cleared out. Now to my mind one of two things happened. Either Miss Cray gets thinking about that old will and the half million it would bring her, and then she remembers her raincoat and goes on up to get it back. Mr. Lessiter is sitting there at his table. She puts on her coat, goes over behind him to the fire as if she was going to warm herself, picks up the poker and-well, there you are. Then she comes home and washes the coat. It must have needed it!”

  The Chief Constable shook his head.

  “Impossible.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir. It’s one of the things that might have happened. The other is that Mr. Robertson took Melling House on his way back from Lenton. He gets there about half past ten, goes in, and sees the raincoat lying there-it’s an old one of his own, you’ll remember. He recognizes it, as Mrs. Mayhew did, by the lining. Remember too that he isn’t wearing a coat himself. He picks it up and puts it on. He has only to make some excuse to go over to the fire. It was a bitter night, and he had been walking in the wind, so it would be easy enough. Well, there he is, with the poker to his hand, as you might say.”

  Randal March leaned back in his chair.

  “Isn’t all this a little too easy, Drake? Do you know what strikes me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ll tell you. It’s what you might call the supine acquiescence of Mr. Lessiter. Here is a young man with quite a bitter quarrel against him-I am assuming that it really was James Lessiter who had seduced Marjory Robertson-that’s your theory, isn’t it? Well, if you assume that, you also assume that Miss Cray’s object in going to Melling House was to warn James Lessiter. Now on the assumption that Carr had just found out who was his wife’s seducer, and that James Lessiter had just been warned that Carr had found him out, do you really think that an interview between them would have been conducted on the lines you indicate-Carr Robertson strolling in, putting on his raincoat, going over to the fire to warm himself, with James Lessiter just sitting at the table with his back to him? I’m afraid I find it quite incredible.”

  “Then it was Miss Cray.”

  “Who has a witness to prove that she returned home at a quarter past nine, and Mrs. Mayhew to prove that the coat was only slightly stained at a quarter to ten.”

  “That leaves more than an hour for her to go back, kill him, and bring the coat away.”

  “And no evidence to prove that she did any such thing.”

  Drake looked at him with narrowed eyes.

  “That raincoat was hanging in her hall, sir. It didn’t walk there.”

  A short silence ensued. Drake thought, “Set on getting her out of it, that’s what he is. All the same these people-whoever’s done murder, it can’t be one of them. But you can’t hush things up like you used to-not nowadays.” He went on with his report.

  “Mr. Holderness-he was Mrs. Lessiter’s solicitor, and he’s acting for Mr. Robertson, and I suppose for Miss Cray-”

  “Yes, I know him.”

  “He was on to me this morning. It seems Mr. Robertson mentioned a circumsta
nce to him which he thought we ought to know about. The Mayhews have a son, a lad of about twenty. He’s been working in London. Mr. Robertson says he saw him get off the six-thirty at Lenton the evening of the murder. He and Miss Bell were on the train too. Well, it might be he’d made a mistake, or it might be he’d made it up, but as it happens, there’s corroboration. The Mayhews go to relations in Lenton on their day out-name of White-tobacco and sweets, 16 Cross Street. We checked up on them for the Wednesday of the murder. You remember Mrs. Mayhew came home early, on the six-forty bus-well Whitcombe checked up on that. There’s a boy there, Ernie White-seventeen-helps his father in the shop. When Mr. Holderness handed us this about young Mayhew I sent Whitcombe along and told him to find out if Ernie White had seen his cousin. You see, if he came down on the six-thirty he’d have to get out to Melling or find someone to put him up in Lenton. As it turns out, Whitcombe finds out that Cyril Mayhew had borrowed young Ernie’s bike. Told him his father had forbidden him the house, but he was going to pop over and see his mother.”

  The Chief Constable straightened up.

  “Why had Mayhew forbidden him the house?”

  “Oh, he’d been in trouble. Spoilt only child brought up in a big house. Got a job in London. Caught taking money out of the till-put on probation. The officer got him a job. Mayhew wouldn’t have him about the house. He’s a very respectable man-and I don’t mean just the ordinary respectable kind-he’s something rather out of the way- very much respected in Melling. I suppose he felt it was a bit of a responsibility. Well, there you are-Cyril Mayhew came down on Wednesday night and borrowed his cousin’s bike. And Mrs. Mayhew took the six-forty bus. There wasn’t much doubt why she went home early. Mr. Holderness and his clerk are out at the House now with Whitcombe checking over the inventory. I looked in on my way, and they say there are some figures missing from the study.”