Dark Threat (2 page)

Frank looked down his long nose and didn’t laugh.

‘Must you?’

Judy nodded.

‘Yes, I must. I haven’t a bean. Aunt Cathy was living on an annuity, though nobody knew it. By the time I’d got everything paid up there wasn’t anything left. John Fossett had nothing but his pay, so there’s nothing for Penny except a minute pension, and I want to save that up to pay for her going to school later on.’

Frank crumbled a piece of bread. What business had John and Nora Fossett to get killed in an air raid and leave Judy to fend for their brat? He said in an angry voice, ‘Where are you going?’

Judy was feeling pleased with herself. She removed the bread and told him not to waste good food. Then she answered his question.

‘It sounds rather nice. Penny and I are to live with the family because—well, I rather gather the cook and butler put all their feet down and said they wouldn’t have us. There are two Miss Pilgrims and an invalid nephew, and the house is called Pilgrim’s Rest. The village is Holt St. Agnes, and—’ She got no farther, because Frank rapped the table and said in the loudest voice she had ever heard him use, ‘You can’t go there!’

Judy became Miss Elliot. Whilst remaining only just across the table from him, her lifted eyebrows and the expression of the eyes beneath them indicated that he had been relegated to a considerable distance. In a tone of suitable coolness she enquired, ‘Why not?’

Frank wasn’t cool at all. The detached and indifferent manner which he affected no longer afforded him any protection. He looked very much taken aback as he said, ‘Judy, you mustn’t. I say, don’t look at me like that! You can’t go there.’

‘Why can’t I? Is there anything wrong with the Miss Pilgrims? One of them came up to town to see me—I thought she was nice. Do you know them?’

He nodded.

‘That would be Miss Columba. She’s all right—at least I suppose she is.’ He ran a hand back over his hair and pulled himself together. ‘Look here, Judy, I’d like to talk to you about this. You know you always said I’d got more cousins than anyone you’d ever heard of, and I suppose I have. Well, one lot lives just outside Holt St. Agnes, and I’ve known the Pilgrims all my life. Roger and I were at school together.’

She said with a zip in her voice, ‘That probably wasn’t his fault.’

‘Don’t be a fool! I’m serious. I want you to listen. Roger is just home from the Middle East. He was taken prisoner by the Italians, escaped, put in some time in hospital, and is still on sick leave. I’ve just had a spot of leave after ’flu myself. I’ve been staying with my cousins at Holt St. Agnes, and I saw quite a lot of Roger.’ He paused and looked at her hard. ‘You can hold your tongue, can’t you? What I’m telling you is what everyone in the village knows more or less, but I wouldn’t want Roger to think I’d been handing it on. He’s a nice chap, but he’s a bit of a dim bulb, and he’s in the devil of a flap. I wouldn’t be talking about it to anyone else, but you oughtn’t to go there.’

Judy sat opposite him with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wary. She said, ‘Why?’

He hesitated, a thing so unusual that it rattled him. The cool self-assurance to which he was accustomed had left him in the lurch. It was like coming into a house and finding the furniture gone. It rattled him. He found nothing better to say than,

‘Things keep happening.’

‘What kind of things?’

This was the devil. The gap between what he could get into words and what he couldn’t get into words was too wide. And behind that there was the horrid niggling thought that the gap had only become evident when he learned that it was Judy who was going to Pilgrim’s Rest. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have bothered his head.

Judy repeated her question.

‘What kind of things?’

He said, ‘Accidents—or perhaps not—Roger thinks not. The ceiling came down in his room—if he hadn’t gone to sleep over a book downstairs he’d have been killed. Another room was burnt out, with him inside—the door jammed and he very nearly didn’t get out in time.’

Judy kept her eyes on his face.

‘Who does the place belong to?’

‘Him.’

‘Is he the invalid nephew?’

‘No—that’s Jerome. He’s a cousin, a good bit older than Roger. Smashed up at Dunkirk. No money. They took him in—have a nurse for him. They’re a very clannish family.’

‘Is he, or is Roger, well—a neurotic type? Would it be either of them playing tricks?’

‘I don’t know. It wouldn’t be like either of them if they were normal. And both things might have been accidents. In the first case a tap had been left running and a sink had overflowed. That’s what brought the ceiling down. In the second Roger went to sleep in front of a fire and the whole place littered with papers he’d been sorting. A spark may have jumped out of the fire.’

Judy said, ‘Is that all?’

There was a little scorn in her voice. It got him on the raw. He said more than he had meant to say.

‘Roger doesn’t believe his father’s death was an accident.’

‘Why doesn’t he?’

Frank’s shoulder jerked.

‘Old Pilgrim went for a ride and never came back. They found him with a broken neck. The mare came home in a lather, and the old groom says there was a thorn under the saddle—but as they’d come down in a briar patch there’s a perfectly believable explanation. Only that makes rather a lot of things to explain, don’t you think? I don’t want you to go there.’

He saw her frown, but there was no anger in her eyes.

‘It’s not so easy, you know. Everyone says there are millions of jobs, but there aren’t—not with Penny. Even now people don’t want a child in the house—you’d think you were asking if you could bring a tiger. And then a lot of them seem to think I couldn’t have Penny if she wasn’t mine. When I tell them about Nora and John they get a kind of we’ve-heard-that-tale-before look. I was just beginning to think I should have to go round with Nora’s marriage lines and Penny’s birth-certificate and even then they’d have gone on believing the worst, when I saw Miss Pilgrim’s advertisement and answered it. And I liked her, and it’s a nice safe village. And anyhow I couldn’t back out at the last minute. We’re going down there tomorrow. It’s no good, Frank.’

He found himself accepting that. It laid a burden on his spirits.

Judy pushed back her chair and got up.

‘Nice of you to care and all that.’ Her tone, casual again, indicated that the subject was now closed.

As they cleared away and washed up together, the sense of pull and strain was gone. Presently she was asking him about the people at Holt St. Agnes—about his cousins, and he was offering to write and tell them she was going to Pilgrim’s Rest. And then, ‘You’ll like Lesley Freyne. She’s in the village, only a stone’s throw from the Pilgrims. Both the houses are right on the village street. She’s a good sort.’

‘Who is she—one of your cousins?’

‘No—the local heiress. Rather shy and not very young. Pots of money and a big house. She’s got about twenty evacuees there. She was going to marry a cousin of the Pilgrims, but it never came off—’

He had nearly stumbled into telling her about Henry Clayton, but he caught himself in time. She would only think he was piling it on, and it was, of course, quite irrelevant. He changed the subject abruptly.

‘If by any chance a Miss Silver turns up, either in the house or in the village, I’d like you to know that she’s a very particular friend of mine.’

Judy gave him a bright smile.

‘How nice. Do tell me all about her. Who is she?’

Frank was to all appearance himself again. His eye had a quizzical gleam, and his voice its negligent drawl as he replied, ‘She is the one and only. I sit at her feet and adore. You will too, I expect.’

Judy felt this to be extremely unlikely, but she went on smiling in an interested manner whilst Frank continued his panegyric.

‘Her name is Maud—same as in Tennyson’s poetry, which she fervently admires. If you so far forget yourself as to put an “e” on to it, she will forgive you in time because she has a kind heart and very high principles, but it will take some doing.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Maudie. I love her passionately. She used to be a governess, but now she is a private detective. She can’t really be a contemporary of Lord Tennyson’s, but she manages to produce that effect. I’ve told Roger to go and see her, so she may be coming down, and if she does, I shall feel a lot happier. Only you don’t know anything, remember. She may be just an ordinary visitor taking a holiday in the village or anything, so not a word to a soul. But if she’s there, you’ll have someone to hold on to.’

Judy swished water into the washing-up bowl and stuck her chin in the air.

M
ISS
S
ILVER WAS
inclined to see the hand of Providence in trifles. Her first contact with the Pilgrim Case occurred when she had just finished working out a new and elaborate stitch for the jumper which she intended for her niece Ethel’s birthday. This she regarded as providential, for though she could, and did, knit her way serenely through all the complications which murder produces, she found it difficult to concentrate upon a really elaborate new pattern at the same time. Ethel Burkett’s annual jumper provided sufficient mental exercise without being brought into competition with a criminal case.

She was considering her good fortune in having obtained this excellent pre-war wool. So soft—such a lovely shade of blue—and no coupons, since it had been produced from a box in the Vicarage attics by Miss Sophy Fell, who had pressed, positively pressed, it on her. And it had been very carefully put away with camphor, so it was as good as on the somewhat distant day when it had been spun.

She had all her stitches on the needles, and the pattern well fixed in her mind, when her front door bell rang and Emma Meadows announced Major Pilgrim. She saw a slight, dark young man with a sallow complexion and a worried frown.

On his side Roger Pilgrim was at once reminded of his aunts. Not that Miss Silver resembled any of them in person, but she and her surroundings appeared to be of approximately the same vintage. His Aunt Millicent, who was as a matter of fact a great-aunt, possessed some curly walnut chairs which were the spit and image of those adorning Miss Silver’s flat—waists, and bow legs, and tight upholstery—only the stuff on Aunt Milly’s had once been green, whilst Miss Silver’s were quite freshly covered in rather a bright shade of blue. Both ladies crowded every available inch of mantelshelf and table-top—Miss Silver’s writing-table excluded—with photographs in archaic silver frames. His Aunt Tina had clung for years to a very similar flowered wall-paper, and possessed at least two of the pictures which confronted him as he entered—
Bubbles
and
The Black Brunswicker.
But the frames of Aunt Tina’s were brown, whilst these were of the shiny yellow maple so dear to the Victorian age.

Miss Silver herself added to the homely effect. His old Cousin Connie also wore her hair in a curled fringe after the fashion set by Queen Alexandra in the late years of the previous century. Aunt Collie’s stockings were of a similar brand of black ribbed wool. For the rest, Miss Silver was herself—a little governessy person with neat features and a lot of mouse-brown hair very strictly controlled by a net. It being three o’clock in the afternoon, she was wearing a pre-war dress of olive-green cashmere with a little boned lace front, very fresh and clean. A pair of pince-nez on a fine gold chain was looped up and fastened on the left side by a bar brooch set with pearls. She also wore a row of bog-oak ingeniously carved, and a large brooch of the same material in the shape of a rose, with an Irish pearl at its heart. Nothing could have felt less like a visit to a private detective.

Miss Silver, having shaken hands and indicated a chair, bestowed upon him the kind, impersonal smile with which she would in earlier days have welcomed a new and nervous pupil. Twenty years as a governess had set their mark upon her. In the most improbable surroundings she conjured up the safe, humdrum atmosphere of the schoolroom. Her voice preserved its note of mild but unquestioned authority. She said, ‘What can I do for you, Major Pilgrim?’

He was facing the light. Not in uniform. A well-cut suit, not too new. He wore glasses—large round ones with tortoiseshell rims. Behind them his dark eyes had a worried look. Her own went to his hands, and saw them move restlessly on the shiny walnut carving which emerged from the padded arms of the Victorian chair.

She had to repeat her question, because he just sat there, fingering the smooth wood and frowning at the pattern on the bright blue carpet which had kept its colour so well. Reflecting with satisfaction that it looked as good as new, she said, ‘Will you not tell me what I can do for you?’

She saw him start, glance at her quickly, and then away again. Whether people use words to convey their thoughts or to conceal them, there is one thing very difficult to conceal from a practised observer. In that momentary glance Miss Silver had seen that thing quite plainly. It was the look you may see in the eyes of a horse about to shy. She thought this young man was reluctant to face whatever it was that had brought him here. He was not the first. A great many people had brought their fears, their faults, and their follies into this room, hoping for they hardly knew what, and then sat nervous and tongue-tied until she helped them out. She smiled encouragingly at Roger Pilgrim, and addressed him very much as if he had been ten years old.

‘Something is troubling you. You will feel better when you have told me what it is. Perhaps you might begin by telling me who gave you my address.’

This undoubtedly came as a relief. He removed his gaze from the multi-coloured roses, paeonies, and acanthus leaves with which the carpet was festooned, and said, ‘Oh, it was Frank—Frank Abbott.’

Miss Silver’s smile became warmer and less impersonal.

‘Sergeant Abbott is a great friend of mine. Have you know him for long?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, we were at school together. He’s a bit older, but our families knew each other. He comes down to stay with some cousins near us. As a matter of fact, he was there last week-end having a spot of leave after ’flu, and I got talking to him. Frank’s a pretty sound fellow—though you wouldn’t think it to look at him, if you know what I mean.’ He gave a short nervous laugh. ‘Seems awfully funny, somebody you’ve been at school with being a policeman. Detective Sergeant Abbott! You know, we used to call him Fug at school. He used to put on masses of hair-fug. I remember his having a lot which fairly stank of White Rose, and the maths master going round smelling us all till he found out who it was, and sending Fug to wash his head.’