The Blue Diamond (22 page)

“You'll think about fixing the day?” the man pleaded. “I can't wait much longer, Minnie.”

“Well, I won't promise,” the girl responded coquettishly, “but—”

She paused; the clock was striking.

“Ten!” she said in alarm. “Why, I don't know what Mrs. Parkyns will say!”

“I was to be at the house at ten o'clock,” the man interrupted. “Sir Arthur was coming to speak to me. He may be a bit late, but I must run. You won't be afraid to go back alone, Minnie? You see, if I kept Sir Arthur waiting—”

“Oh, I shall not be a bit afraid now,” the girl said cheerfully, “now I know there's no call to be! You make haste, Jim.”

They separated, and the superintendent, watching them, saw the man hurry off round the corner of the house. Minnie turned back towards the kitchen entry.

Superintendent Stokes came to a sudden resolution, and stepping quickly forth from the shadows, he laid his hand on her shoulder. The girl shrieked aloud, nor did her terror seem allayed when she recognized him.

“Oh, it's the superintendent! What were you wanting with me?”

“Only just to have a little chat with you,” he said blandly. “It is Miss Spencer, Miss Hargreave's maid, isn't it? Ah, I thought so! Just the person I wanted! There is a question—”

“I haven't any time to answer questions now,” Minnie said, with a sulkiness underlying which there was an element of fear, as the superintendent was quick to discover. “If I am not back in a minute Mrs. Parkyns will be fine and angry.”

The superintendent kept pace with her hurried steps.

“Maybe, then, I had better come in with you and tell Mrs. Parkyns how things are, and that I have a question or two to put to you,” he suggested as they crossed the stable-yard and came in sight of the brightly-lighted kitchen entrance. “Perhaps that will be best; we shall be quieter than we should be out here.”

Minnie stopped suddenly and faced him.

“Pretty talk there would be if you were to do anything of the kind, as you know, Mr. Stokes! Will you tell me what you want to know?”

The superintendent stood with his back to the open door, and by the light from the inside he could see the girl's face, while his own remained in shadow.

“I want to know first why you think you are as good as Mary Marston's murderess?”

The girl shrank back as if he had given her a blow.

“You—you were listening?” she gasped.

“It would be as well for you to keep a civil tongue in your head, young woman. If I am taking a walk in the shrubbery of an evening, me being employed on business as brings me there by Sir Arthur, and you and your young man choose to stand there talking out loud and taking no heed who is about—well, you must expect to have your words brought up against you, that is all I can say; and naturally, me being looking into this case of Mary Marston, when I hear a young woman say that often and often when she thinks of Nurse Marston she feels like a murderess—why, I come to her to know what she means by it.”

“I never harmed Nurse Marston,” said Minnie shortly, “and I don't believe anyone else did either.”

He glanced at the bright, defiant eyes, at the hot red spots that were beginning to burn on her white cheeks.

“Why should you feel like a murderess, then?” he asked in the crisp, concise manner that was familiar to subordinates.

Minnie paused.

“Because I was a fool,” she burst out at last. “It was me as took her message from my lady as she was to go to the small library, and it was me as showed her the way there, and if she hadn't gone there none of this might have happened.”

The superintendent looked at her.

“I don't see that you have any call to blame yourself for that.”

“Don't I tell you that I was a fool to think about it?” said Minnie testily. “But there, ever since that cuff was found I have had it on my mind as I was the one to take her the message. Then when we saw her the other night in the shrubbery, me and Alice Brown, she pointed at me. I thought as it was her ghost then; but now I feel sure that it was her herself.”

“What has made you change your mind?”

Minnie fidgeted.

“I don't believe in ghosts.”

“Sensible girl!” he commented gravely. “What has made you feel sure that there are no such things as ghosts?”

Minnie moved her head as if his steady glance embarrassed her.

“Oh, sometimes I think one thing and sometimes another!” she said evasively. “We are all alike for that, I expect.”

“Just so! just so!” he assented suavely; then with an oblique glance, “It wasn't for instance, anything that Jim Gregory said to you just now that brought you round to his way of thinking?”

“Said to me!” Minnie repeated. “Why, what should Jim Gregory have to say to me about it?”

“Ah, that is for you to tell me!” parried Superintendent Stokes. “You and him had got your heads pretty close together when he was talking to you.”

He fancied a shade of relief flitted over the girl's face, and she even smiled slightly as she looked down.

“Bless you, Mr. Stokes, do you think it was of Mary Marston we were talking then?” she asked coyly. “It—we have other matters to think about, Jim and me, we are going to have our banns put up a month on Sunday. If that is all you want to know I must be going in, or I shall get into trouble.”

“You can't tell me any more?”

“Haven't I told you I can't?” she retorted. “You'll get no more out of me if you keep me here until midnight.”

“Ah, well, I shall not do that,” he said carelessly. “We will have another little talk one day before long, Miss Spencer. Good night.”

He stood still a little while after she had left him.

“That girl is telling lies,” he ruminated. “Why, I wonder? I can't see how she could be mixed up in it. I may have been on the wrong scent all this time, but it don't seem likely. However, I will look Miss Minnie Spencer up a bit; and while I am about it”—he pulled his lower lip out thoughtfully—“I shall devote a little of my attention to Mr. Jim Gregory also. I wish he had whispered in my ear instead of in Minnie Spencer's!”

“I
HOPE
it will be fine for Tuesday, Miss Mavis.”

“So do I, Mrs. Grogram, indeed!” Mavis replied. She was standing in Lockford Street, a little basket in her hand; for the nonce she was acting as Lady Laura's deputy and distributing the tickets for her various charities. Mrs. Grogram, a lady of independent views and the parent of a numerous progeny, was leaning over her garden gate in a
négligé
costume. “I don't know what we shall do if it be wet,” Mavis went on. “Certainly there will be the tents, but you will be crowded up all of you.”

“Ay, and tents isn't everything if it rains!” remarked Mrs. Grogram, whose disposition was apparently pessimistic. “I mind how when I was staying with my cousin and we went to Squire Mayhew's harvest home it set on to pour, and after about half an hour it come through the marquee, as they called it, just as if it was running through a sieve.”

“Well, we must hope that ours will be made of stouter stuff,” said Mavis with a laugh. “You'll bring Tommy, won't you, Mrs. Grogram. My brother wants the children particularly.”

“Which I call very good of him, m'm, and him having none of his own. Oh, yes, I shall bring Tommy! Mr. Garth Davenant'll be coming down, I reckon, Miss Mavis?”

Mavis's colour deepened.

“He will be at the Court to-morrow.”

“Ah, I thought we should have him over, though it doesn't seem long since he went away! As I said to Grogram when he said maybe Mr. Garth would not be able to spare the time, ‘Bless you, Grogram,' I says, ‘he'll make time for that! Do you think he'd leave Miss Mavis alone with all the folk going in and out of the Manor, and all Sir Arthur's friends about?' Nice looking young gentlemen too, some of them, I'll be bound! No, he won't give them a chance of cutting him out!”

In spite of a touch of vexation Mavis laughed aloud.

“I don't think he is coming because he thinks I am not to be trusted, Mrs. Grogram, but because he knows that I shouldn't enjoy it a bit if he were not there.”

“Ay, do you think so, indeed, miss? Well, we are all like that one time or another,” Mrs. Grogram replied indulgently. “As for Mr. Garth,” she added more critically, “I am not going to say but he is a fine figure of a man, but as far as looks go he isn't a patch on poor Mr. Walter. The last big ‘do' as you may call it, as we had down in these parts was when he come of age, wasn't it, miss?

Mavis looked grave.

“I suppose it was,” she said hesitatingly, “but that was when my uncle was alive, before we lived here, and I was only a child then.”

“Were you really, miss? I am sure no one would think it to see the well-grown young lady you are now,” Mrs. Grogram observed complimentarily. “Then you never see Mr. Walter, miss? But there, it wasn't long after that that it all happened. I shouldn't wonder if it don't bring it back to Mr. Garth though. The good lady as come down last week is over again for the coming of age, I suppose, miss?”

“What good lady?” asked Mavis mechanically. Her thoughts had strayed far away from Mrs. Grogram and were busy with that tragedy of old.

“The one as come here thinking she might know something about the young lady, Miss Hilda, as they call her.”

Mavis frowned. Though of late, unconfessed even to herself, an element of distrust had crept into her feeling for Hilda, still loyalty to her brother demanded that Mrs. Grogram's disparaging tone, when speaking of his fiancée, should be checked.

“Oh, you mean Mrs. Leparge!” she said coldly. “No, she is not likely to be here—in fact, poor lady, she is probably too much occupied to find the time.”

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Grogram said confidently. “She has got time enough, miss. She is staying down here now. An hour or so ago I had occasion to go up to Farmer Townson's, and I come across her talking to Miss Hilda over by the Home Wood.”

Mavis looked surprised.

“I think you must be mistaken, Mrs. Grogram.”

“Mistaken! Me, miss!” Mrs. Grogram's tone was righteously indignant. “'Tain't often as I make a mistake; more by token as I had almost to ask 'em to move to let me get over the stile. This person here, she were telling the young lady she must do something—I don't know rightly what, I'm sure, but I heard her say, ‘The rest can be managed, but it remains for you to do your part.' Yes, miss, them was her very words.”

“Oh!” said Mavis, feeling distinctly puzzled. “Well, I don't know, I am sure; I had no idea she was likely to be in the neighbourhood again. Perhaps her inquiries after her daughter may have brought her this way.”

“Perhaps they may,” Mrs. Grogram assented with a sniff as Mavis moved on. “Thank you kindly, miss! I am sure I hope the weather will hold good.”

Mavis walked quickly up the lane and into the park. Very bitterly now, watching her brother's growing infatuation for Hilda, was she inclined to regret the introduction of a stranger into their home circle; more especially did she blame herself for yielding to the spell that Hilda's beauty and charm had cast over her.

She dated her first conscious feeling that Hilda was not the wife her brother should have chosen from Mrs. Leparge's visit, and she was by no means inclined to welcome the news that that lady was in the neighbourhood again. She knit her brows as she walked quickly over the short grass, crisp with the first frost of autumn, and tried to recall the events of the last three months in their true sequence, but so much seemed to have happened in them that her brain grew confused. She told herself, looking back, that she could have fancied it a phantasmagoria of bad dreams, in which the only thing that was real was her love for Garth, or, as she whispered with a tender little smile, their love for one another.

Lunch was on the table, and was indeed, being somewhat of an informal meal at the Manor, already in progress when she went into the dining-room. Hilda was looking particularly well, Mavis noticed, as she slipped into the place opposite; the pale blue gown she was wearing was one that had been run together for her by Lady Laura's maid, as Mavis knew, but its very simplicity made Hilda look younger and more girlish. She seemed bright and animated too, and was exchanging gay badinage with Arthur, from whom she glanced off to smile at Mavis.

“What do you say to this new proposal, Mavis—that you and I are to take a day in town to-morrow to choose the presents to be given at the treat next week?”

“It is out of the question for me, I am afraid,” Mavis said as the man brought her a plate. “Garth comes down to-morrow. I hear you have met a friend to-day, Hilda.”

“A friend!” Hilda looked bewildered. “I don't know what you mean. I think,” with a wistful smile, “all the friends I know are in this room at present.”

“I heard you had been having a chat with Mrs. Leparge.”

“With Mrs. Leparge?” Hilda's amazement became more obvious. “Is she here?”

“Isn't she?” Mavis parried. “Have you not been talking to her?”

“I? Certainly not!”

“What bee have you got in your bonnet now, Mavis?” her brother struck in. “Hilda has not had much opportunity of talking to anybody but me; she has been out with me all the morning, and I think I have taken up most of her time.”

“I suppose it was a mistake then,” Mavis said, turning, her attention to her lunch. “Mrs. Grogram told me she saw you by the stile going into the Home Coppice, and that you were talking to Mrs. Leparge.”

“We went through the Home Wood; I had to speak to Greyson,” Sir Arthur said, “but I didn't see Mrs. Grogram.”

“Oh, that was it!” Hilda exclaimed with a laugh. “While you went into Greyson's cottage and I was waiting for you, Arthur, a woman—a lady—came up and asked me a lot of questions about the neighbourhood. I was sorry I couldn't give her much information, but I didn't notice that she was like Mrs. Leparge.''