Flowers Stained With Moonlight (13 page)

Mrs Bryce-Fortescue was already moving towards the door. She held it for Ellen and as she passed out, she said in a tone of dismissal,

‘Leave your address with Mrs Firmin, Ellen, please. We will write to you if we have good news. For what happened seven years ago – I knew nothing, but perhaps I should have asked myself. In any case, I promise you, as soon as we are able to help you, we will write to you.’

They went out, and I scuttled downstairs and hung about outside, for I had a great desire to see Ellen alone. But she must have remained with Mrs Firmin, and I could not stay outside forever. I missed her departure.

Dora, Dora, can Ellen have something to do with the murder? It is so strange, her saying that she meant to turn to him and ask him for help, after seven years, just the very week that he died! Did she really mean to turn to him, or did she – did she what? What could she possibly have done, poor woman? What did she mean, when she cried out
‘Was it all for nothing?’
Ellen’s role in all this worries me. Is it all just an incredible, and terrible, coincidence? You can help me, Dora, and you must!

Your own

Vanessa

Oh, Dora –

I hate to tell you this. Ellen said she never saw Mr Granger in the last seven years – but it was a lie!

She must be home by now, and if you have had my letter, you are perhaps already talking to her. Oh, I feel so tormented by it all that I don’t know what to do. I cannot get over the idea that – although I hardly dare write this to you – that
she
may have something to do with Mr Granger’s murder – some mysterious connection with the man in the red cape, which I cannot yet fathom! Horrible thought. Oh, what a dreadful thing it is to have asked you for your help, when you are her only friend and confidante. Would you betray her even if you knew the truth? Would you answer me if you could? Oh, Dora, I never meant to put you in such a dreadful, dreadful situation. But what else can I do?
I await your answer with fear. Will I know how to read between the lines?

Let me tell you what it is that I have learnt, which has increased my fears so intensely. As you know, today was the day I was to return for a visit to Haverhill with Peter Middleman (who to my dismay is becoming increasingly devoted). I was trembling with excitement, for I meant to speak to old Martha, as Pat had encouraged me to do, and I could not repress my hope that perhaps she would have remembered to whom belonged the face that she saw that day. And I could not prevent myself from being filled with a strange, agonising mixture of hope and distress, while my mind spun endlessly over all manner of possibilities.

The forms and customs must be respected, so we began the afternoon by having tea, as before, with Mrs Bird, except that by this time, the excitement of the murder has somewhat worn off in the village and no other guests came to greet us. She was delighted to see Peter, and spoilt him shamefully, feeding him a great quantity more scones and seedcake than he really needed, but conversation now turned entirely upon his temporary life at Mrs Bryce-Fortescue’s, and his future prospects. He dropped sundry hints which I tried to ignore supremely, but some of them made me blush; blush doubly, Dora, dear, for not only was I distressed by the simple mention of such things in public, however restricted and benevolent that public might be, but they were all wrong and false, and I felt that I was leading on poor Peter very unkindly, above all by never telling him that I was engaged. This is very bad, and I am using him shamefully,
but I need him as he affords me my only possible port of entry into the closed little society of the village of Haverhill. My status as detective is, after all, still as well-kept a secret as ever!

Eventually, with some effort, I managed to lead the conversation around to how pleasant last week’s tea had been, and to the subject of Martha.

‘Old Martha? Yes, she’s the strange lady of the village, isn’t she,’ said Mrs Bird importantly, speaking as one who is a pillar of society. ‘She lives in that run-down hut at the very end of the road that runs out towards the manor, and won’t have it fixed up or mended or the chimney seen to, though Bill or Thomas would be happy enough to do a little carpentry or even just some caulking any time, just out of kindness! But she doesn’t want it – she’s hardly ever in the place anyway, for she walks as no one walks that I’ve ever seen! At all hours, from dawn to the small hours of the morning, she can be seen walking with her stick, one slow step after another, up the roads and down the paths and through the fields and round the backs of the houses. There’s no place you might not run across her. There’s some who say as she might be a witch, but walking, walking, walking’s all she ever does that I’ve seen.’

‘That is strange,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think she wanders about the manor as well as the village down here?’

‘I suppose she does. She likes the houses as much as the wild woods and fields. Many’s the time I’ve seen her face looking right through the kitchen window, it’s given me a fair start! She doesn’t hesitate to peer in if it looks
interesting to her. Some people hate it, some in the village have scolded her or closed up their gates or put up thick curtains just because of her, but most are used to her ways. Anything new, anything that goes on, you can be sure that old Martha knows all about it. But she’s very close. She doesn’t say much – just enough to whet your appetite, usually, and then shuts up tight as an oyster!’

‘She doesn’t seem to avoid company, since she was here to tea,’ I remarked.

‘Oh no, she doesn’t avoid company, she likes company, but she likes her own society as well. She’s a strange one – times are, she’ll talk just like anybody else, and other times, she’ll say shocking things in the same tones, or even things that make no sense, that nobody can understand. But as I said, we’re all used to her hereabouts.’

‘What does she live on? What does she do for food?’

‘She has a little money, somehow, for she buys a bit of bread now and again, and grows some vegetables at the back of her hut. She eats this and that, and won’t refuse an invitation or even a basket that we put up for her. Once Mr Granger came down with a basket for her and managed to find her when he wanted her – eggs were in it, I remember it well, for they ended up on his head. She flung the whole thing back at him and would have none of it. I asked her why but she would never say anything that meant anything. “He’s bad,” she’d say. “He’s a bad ’un. Pretending to give but meaning to take, take a body’s soul away, he would and he does and I know it.” I’d have dearly liked to know what she meant but she’d never say anything else.’

I felt more and more that I simply must manage to have a talk with old Martha. I had especially brought out two loaves of bread and a large cabbage, in a bag which Peter insisted, embarrassingly, on carrying for me although I had not told him what was in it. I had hesitated about what to offer; delicacies or even fruits seemed to me to be out of place. The bag had remained in the carriage, but now, as we bid goodbye to Mrs Bird, I told Peter about it, and explained that I wished to find old Martha as I had noticed her sad condition during our last visit and wanted to offer her a trifle. Peter is a young man of simple ideas, and although the whole operation seemed entirely unnecessary to him, he did not object to the idea of a rather lengthy ramble in the late afternoon sunshine, so off we went together to search for Martha.

We began by following the main road down to where it thinned to a wide path just capable of taking a single carriage, and wandered off through the fields towards the manor at a distance of a mile or so. There was Martha’s ramshackle little hut. We knocked, and even opened the door (which was not closed, but merely left ajar) to peer into the dark, littered interior. But she was not there, as indeed we had quite expected. Then we tried to guess where she might be, and for a good three hours, we wandered up hill and down dale; we even went through the famous Granger woods where the murder took place, and Peter showed me exactly where he had come upon the body.

‘Lying right down on his back, he was, almost smiling. He never expected what happened for a moment, that’s clear.’

We strolled at length along the road from which a certain witness had espied a certain person whose description had never been made quite clear, and then leaving the road (since we could see along its entire length for a great distance) we went through the woods and circled around till we had returned to the village. We went up the main street and down some lanes, but all without the slightest success; no trace of Martha was to be seen either by us or by the few people we eventually asked in our weariness.

By this time it was nearing nine o’clock and the light was quite dim. Dusk was coming on apace, shadows lengthened till they filled out all the ground and the streets emptied of people entirely. It was not terribly late, but it seemed late because of the absolute quietness which had taken over the streets. A black cat crossed in front of us and Peter jumped.

‘Let’s just take the carriage and go back home,’ he said. ‘You’ll be ever so late in.’

‘I suppose we must go,’ I agreed reluctantly. I did not want to leave, but thought there was no hope of finding old Martha now that we could no longer see any real distance in front of us, and complete darkness would come in another hour. So together we wended our way to the public house where Peter left the carriage when visiting the village. He went to get the stable boy to let out the horses, and I went directly to the carriage house, meaning to climb in and collapse wearily on the cushions which, although not comparable to the plushy mounds decorating the interior of Mr Korneck’s luxurious vehicle, were nonetheless highly
agreeable. And it must be said that I rarely have occasion to take advantage of them, as I always feel I must sit on the box with Peter when he takes me about.

I opened the door and was about to climb in, when I heard a slight rustling sound, and a soft, whispery voice said almost in my ear,

‘Pretty, pretty, ain’t they? Soft and pretty, nice for a lady.’

My dear Dora, I reeled and nearly fainted from sheer shock! I stood in the pitch darkness, everything about me stiffened to attention, and waited without moving.

But something in the carriage moved and shifted. The door I had unlatched opened wider, and a pale face surrounded by wispy hair peered out from the interior, barely visible in the gloaming. Realising that my shock was due to no more than some elderly person who had settled for a rest within the carriage, I pulled myself together and addressed the pale face.

‘Who are you, please?’ I said, suppressing a tremor.

‘Why, it’s Martha, don’t you recognise old Martha?’ she whispered, leaning towards me. ‘You’ve been a-looking for me, haven’t you?’

I couldn’t believe my ears, nor my eyes. I had been searching for her for hours, and here she was – and she knew all about it!

‘How could you know we were looking for you?’

‘I seen you walk up, I seen you walk down, I seen you in old Martha’s hut,’ she answered. ‘I followed you a long, long way. What did you want old Martha for, then?’

I put my foot on the step of the carriage and leant towards her.

‘I – I brought something for you. A little package – it’s in the carriage.’

‘I found it, thank you, thank you. A nice cabbage. So it was for old Martha you brought the loaves and cabbage, was it? I thought it might be. And why did you bring them, then? What is it that you want?’

I was afraid that Peter might return at any moment, and Martha seemed so entirely perspicacious that I decided it was pointless to beat about the bush at all.

‘I wanted to ask you about the young man you saw on the day Mr Granger was murdered,’ I said quickly. ‘Do you remember him?’

‘Of course, of course. I followed him up, I followed him down, just like I followed you, but he walked too fast for old Martha, and I lost him.’

‘Last time, you said that he seemed somehow familiar to you. Do you have any idea of whom he reminded you? Could you possibly have seen him before?’

‘Ah, it’s strange, very strange. I don’t know, I don’t know. I knew him, yet didn’t know him. His head, his face, his mouth, and especially the way he walked. With a sway. When did I see that face? When did I see that mouth? Something’s wrong. Where, where? In Mr Granger’s house was it? In Mr Granger’s house?’

I seized quickly on this new thread.

‘Were you ever in Mr Granger’s house?’ I asked.

‘No, never, never, not one time. Mr Granger was evil. I wouldn’t enter his house. Martha wouldn’t go in there. He wanted to take my home away from me. He tried, he
came to me with fine presents and money. He would have put me in a home to get my house. I threw it all back at him. Martha won’t eat the offerings of evil, no, she won’t. He hated me then. He wanted my house for himself out of greed, out of greed, to make his big park even bigger. I wouldn’t let him, I wouldn’t talk to him, I wouldn’t go near him.’

‘But then, how could you have seen someone inside his house?’

‘Through the window, Martha looked through the windows of Mr Granger’s house often, often. Sometimes she was seen and Mr Granger sent out a footman to say that Martha would be arrested for trespassing, locked up in jail, sent to a madhouse. So I crept up silently, like a cat.’

‘And … can you not remember if you saw anyone there who reminded you of the young man?’ I said again, desperately hoping to jog her memory.

‘I saw many things, many things no one was meant to see,’ she said, with a soft cackle. ‘Mr Granger quarrelled with his wife. She hated him, it was plain to see. He told her he’d have the marriage annulled – she said he’d be a laughing stock. He told her he’d leave her and her mother without a penny in the world. She shrugged. He wrenched her arm and said she’d better think hard, because he meant to have her and he would, he’d waited long enough, he’d be damned if he waited longer. She pulled the bell. She didn’t say much ever but I never seen any marriage with so much hate. Maybe she didn’t do her
duty by her husband, but he was an evil man, devoured by greed. Martha knows it. Martha feels the presence of the devil.’

‘Perhaps he was just angry. How do you know that he was evil?’

‘I saw the lady that came to him in tears and begged for help. “For our son,” she said. He didn’t deny it. So he had a son, Mr Granger did, him that was living with his girl-wife in his fine house. “We have nothing,” she said to him. “I gave you a house,” he said. “But we have nothing to live on. I work day and night but it isn’t enough,” she said. “I told you never to bother me again. That was the bargain,” he said. “But it’s for your son, your own little boy – so that he doesn’t grow up poor and miserable! Your very own child – he looks like you,” she said. “I told you I’ll leave him something in my will to make a man of him,” he said. “That’s enough – stay out of my life now and forever, or you’ll find yourself out of your house and on the streets where there are a lot of women no worse than you.” “Put there by men like you,” she cried. “Put there by their own weakness and stupidity,” he said. “This world belongs to those who have the strength to handle it. Now get out.” And he rang the bell and called for his coachman to throw her off the grounds.’