Dark Threat (9 page)

Miss Columba opened a door which lurked in the shadow of an immense mahogany sideboard. Here they were in a stone passage again. Miss Columba pursued it until she came to a locked door. Diving into the pocket of her slacks, she produced the key and opened it. As soon as she did so the smell of burnt wood came out to mingle with the smell of damp which had caused Miss Silver to reflect upon the unfortunate fact that old houses really were deplorably unhygienic.

‘This is where the fire was,’ said Miss Columba.

For once it really was not necessary for her to speak at all. Of the wooden pigeonholes which had once covered the walls only some charred pieces remained, but the walls, of the same stone as the passage, stood firm. The floor had been swept, the furniture removed. The place stood empty except for the smell of fire.

Miss Silver permitted herself to say, ‘Dear me!’ After which Miss Columba locked the door and turned back.

A cross passage ran off in the direction of the kitchen premises. Just beyond it she opened another door and said, ‘The lift room.’

It was square and quite unfurnished—bare stone walls and a bare stone floor, except where an old-fashioned hand-worked lift bulged out from the left-hand side. There was no window.

Miss Columba explained.

‘This is the oldest part of the house. There was a spiral staircase going up to the next floor and down to the cellars. My father had it removed and the lift put in after he broke his hip in the hunting-field. It comes up just beyond the bedroom you are in, and he had it made to go right down to the cellars because he had some very fine wine, and he liked to be able to go down and look at it.’

‘You have extensive cellars?’

‘Oh, yes. That’s what keeps the house so dry. They are very old.’

‘This is not the only entrance, I suppose?’

‘No—there is a stair in the kitchen wing.’

They proceeded there, returning by way of the dining-room to the hall, and leaving it again by yet another long stone passage.

The kitchen premises were as large and inconvenient as is usual in old houses. There were innumerable rooms, many of them not in use, or devoted to mere collections of lumber. The kitchen itself spoke of the time when hospitality meant endless courses. Ghosts of the enormous meals of other days presented themselves to the imagination—dinner-parties where two kinds of soup were followed by a practically endless procession of fish, entree, roast, birds, two kinds of sweets, a savoury, an ice, and finally dessert. After more than four years of war the ghosts had a somewhat shamefaced air. Miss Silver gazed at the range, and thought how large and inconvenient it was, and what a lot of work all these stone floors must make.

They came out of the kitchen and branched into another passage. Miss Columba opened a door and switched on the light.

‘This is the way to the cellars. Do you wish to see them?’

If she hoped that Miss Silver would say no, she was disappointed. With a slight deepening of gloom she led the way down what was evidently a very old stair, the treads worn down and hollowed by generations of Pilgrims and their butlers visiting and tending that centre of hospitality, the wine-cellar.

‘My grandfather was said to have some of the finest madeira in England,’ said Miss Columba. ‘All these cellars on the left were full in his day, but now there is only the one with any stock in it. I believe there is still a bottle or two of the Napoleon brandy. Roger should really go through the cellar-book with Robbins—it has not been checked up since his father died. But I can’t get him to take an interest. He likes a whisky and soda, but he always says he doesn’t know one kind of wine from another. I am a teetotaller, but my father had a very fine palate.’

As this was by far the longest speech she had heard Miss Columba make, Miss Silver was able to assess the importance of the wine-cellar as established by family tradition.

She was presently shown where the lift came down, and the hand-trolley was pointed out by means of which the wine could be transported without being handled or disturbed.

‘It can be wheeled into the lift. You see, old wine must never be shaken. My father had these rubber-tyred wheels substituted for the old hard ones.’

The cellars were certainly very extensive. They branched off right and left from a central hall, the roof supported by pillars. Before the days of electric light it must have been unpleasantly dark. Even now there were heavily shadowed corners and a passage or two that rambled away into gloom. The air was still and warm, and the whole place wonderfully dry. Farther in, several of the cellars appeared to be full of discarded furniture. Others were piled with trunks and packing-cases.

‘We have all Jerome’s things here, and my other nephew’s too.’

‘Mr. Clayton?’

There was a little silence before Miss Columba said, ‘Yes.’ She continued without any pause. ‘And of course my nephew Jack’s things. He is Roger’s brother. We have had no news of him since he was taken prisoner at Singapore.’ Voice and manner set Henry Clayton aside from questioning.

They came to the end of the cellars and turned. There was something about the stillness, the warmth and dryness of the air, that was oppressive. If they stood still and did not talk, there was no sound at all. In any house, in any place above the ground, there are at all times of the day and night so many small unnoticed sounds which blend with one another and are not distinguished or distinguishable—they are part of the background against which thought passes into action. But under the earth that background is blotted out—there are only ourselves, and silence comes too near.

Both ladies were conscious of relief as they mounted the steps and came out into the very moderate daylight of the kitchen premises. Miss Columba switched off the light and shut the door. After which they completed their tour of the house by visiting a large, cold, double drawing-room with all the furniture in dust-sheets. Six long windows were framed in pale brocade. They looked upon the paved garden. Warmed and peopled, the room might easily have been charming. Now it, too, suggested ghosts—elegant, faded drawing-room ghosts, doing a little vague haunting in their best clothes, nothing more alarming about them than the slight frail melancholy of an old-fashioned water-colour drawing. There were four heads in this style upon one of the walls. Perhaps Miss Silver recognized Janetta Pilgrim’s scarcely altered profile, perhaps she was only guessing. She stopped in front of the four oval frames and admired.

‘Very charming—very charming indeed. Your sister? And yourself? And the other two? You had two married sisters, I believe.’

Miss Columba said, ‘Yes.’

Miss Silver pursued her enquiries.

‘Mrs. Clayton? And—?’

‘My sisters Mary and Henrietta. Henrietta married a distant cousin. Jerome is her son.’

‘Very charming indeed. Such delicate work.’

The four young girls in their white muslin and pink and blue ribbons gazed serenely on the room. Even in this restrained medium the young Columba looked solid and rather sulky. But Mary, who was to be Mrs. Clayton, bloomed like a rose. Perhaps the pink ribbons helped, perhaps she had been pleased with them. Her dark eyes smiled, and so did her rosy mouth.

There remained only the study, a moderate-sized room, book-lined and smelling of wood-fire and tobacco, with a faint undercurrent of dry rot. The books, handsomely bound editions of an earlier day, were obviously in dignified retirement—Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Reade, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Surtees and, surprisingly, the entire works of Mrs. Henry Wood. All had the air of having fallen asleep upon the shelves a generation or two ago.

I
T WAS PLEASANT
to return to the morning-room, which faced the dining-room across the hall and was of the same date. Furnished in Miss Janetta’s taste, Miss Silver approved it as bright and comfortable. True, its front windows also faced the wall, but there was less shrubbery, so the effect was not so dark, and the two side windows looked south-east and admitted all the sun. There was a blue cineraria in a pink china pot, and a pink cineraria in a blue china pot; curtains, carpets, and chintzes in variation upon these two themes; a large sofa for Miss Janetta, and a number of extremely comfortable chairs. When Miss Columba observed that her nephew Roger was standing by the far window looking out, she shut the door on Miss Silver and hastened to do battle with Pell about the peas.

With a slight preliminary cough Miss Silver addressed a rather unpromising back.

‘I should be very glad of a word with you, Major Pilgrim.’

He turned round with so much of a start that it seemed he must have been unaware of the opening and shutting of the door. Miss Silver, advancing to meet him, admired the pink cineraria.

‘Really most charming. Such a sweet shade. Miss Columba is a most successful gardener. She tells me these plants do not require heat, only protection from the frost.’

He said in a worried voice, ‘You wanted to speak to me?’

‘Yes, indeed—a most fortunate opportunity.’

Roger did not appear to share this view. His voice sounded uneasy as he said, ‘What is it?’

Miss Silver had a reassuring smile for him.

‘Just a little information which I hope you will be able to give me. I think we will remain here by the window. It will then seem quite natural that we should break off our conversation and move back into the room if anyone should come in.’ She continued in a conversational style. ‘You have really a most interesting house—very interesting indeed. Miss Columba has just been taking me round it. I was deeply interested. No, thank you,’ as he pushed forward a chair, ‘it will be better if we remain standing. The view from this window must be very pleasant in summer. Those are lilacs over there, are they not—and a very fine laburnum. It must be very delightful indeed when they are all in bloom together.’ Here she coughed and went on with no real change of voice. ‘Pray, will you tell me whether you have taken my advice?’

He gave a nervous start.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I think you do. Before you left me the other day I advised you to return home and inform your household that you had no present intention of proceeding with the sale of your property. Did you do this?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Then, as she made a faint sound of regret, he burst out, ‘How can I? I’m more or less committed, and the place will have to go soon anyhow. It’s too expensive to run. Look at the house—you’ve just been over it. It wants the sort of staff people used to have and nobody’s ever going to get again. They’re all at me to keep it, but why should I? And after what’s happened here I don’t want to. I’d like to get clear of it and have a place I can run on my income. I don’t like big houses, and I don’t like old houses. I want something clean and new that don’t need an army of servants to look after it. I’m selling!’

Miss Silver appeared to approve these sentiments. It was, indeed, her considered opinion that old houses, though of interest to the sight-seer, were by no means comfortable to live in. Recollections of dry-rot, neglected plumbing, a deficiency of modern amenities, and a tendency to rats, arose in her mind and rendered her tone sympathetic as she replied, ‘You have every right to do so. I merely suggested that you should for the moment employ a subterfuge.’

He looked at her so blankly that, as on a previous occasion, she obliged with a translation.

‘My advice was that you should allow your household to think that you had given up the idea of selling. You could, I imagine, ask the intending purchaser to give you a little time.’

He looked at her in a wretched kind of way.

‘You mean I’m to tell lies about it. I’m no good at it.’ He might have been confessing to being bad at sums.

Miss Silver coughed.

‘It is very advisable, in view of your own safety.’

He repeated his former remark.

‘I’m no good at it.’

‘I am sorry about that. And now, Major Pilgrim, I would like to ask you a few questions about the Robbins. I know that they have been here for thirty years. I want to know whether they have, or whether they think they have, any grounds for a grudge against you, or against your family.’

He was certainly discomposed, but there might have been more than one reason for that—surprise, offence, or just mere nervousness. What he said was, ‘Why should they have?’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘I do not know. I should like to be informed. Are you aware of any such grudge?’

He said, ‘No,’ but might as well have left it unsaid, there was so little conviction in his tone. He may have been aware of this himself, for he followed it up with a vexed ‘What made you think of anything like that?’

‘I have to think of motives, Major Pilgrim. You have told me that you think your life has been attempted. There must be a motive behind that. Neither you nor I can afford to say of anyone in this house that he or she is to be beyond suspicion or above enquiry. I believe the Robbins had a daughter—’

‘Mabel? How could she have anything to do with it? She’s been dead for years.’

‘Miss Columba did not say that.’

‘What did she say?’

‘That the girl had got into trouble and run away, and her parents had been unable to trace her.’

He turned and stared out into the garden.

‘Well, that’s true. And as it happened before the war, I can’t see any reason for digging it up now.’

Miss Silver gave a slight reproving cough.

‘We are looking for a motive. If you do not wish to give me the information for which I am asking, I can no doubt obtain it elsewhere, but I would rather not do so.’

He said in an irritable voice, ‘There isn’t the slightest necessity—I’ll tell you anything you want to know. It’s just that I don’t see why it’s got to be dug up. She used to be here in the house, you know. She was a jolly little kid. They sent her away to school, and she passed all sorts of examinations and got a very good job in Ledlington—lived there with an aunt and came back here for week-ends. Then all of a sudden they found out—the Robbins found out, or the aunt, I think it was the aunt—that she was going to have a child, and she ran away. I was up in Scotland with my regiment, and I didn’t hear about it till afterwards. It was in the summer of ’39, just before the war. The Robbins were frightfully cut up. They tried to find her, but they couldn’t. That’s as far as Aunt Collie knows.’