Let Him Lie (16 page)

“She'll be hanged!”

It was Sarah who spoke, suddenly abandoning pretence in a dry whisper soft as the beating of a moth's wing.

“How did you know?”

“I saw her, Jeanie,” said the child in a hoarse whisper.

“You can't have done, dear! You were with me in the hay-loft!”

“It was afterwards,” uttered Sarah, still in that ghostly whisper. “When you were with Aunt Agnes in the lane. I went to fetch some water, and I couldn't find a bucket. You remember. I went behind the barn into the orchard to fetch the chicken's basin. And I saw Marjorie crossing the orchard. She had a gun. She came from where the lambing-shed is. She looked awful. I saw her look at where Uncle Robert was. She just looked at him. She looked awful. And then she went out quickly through the gap. She didn't see me. She seemed to look round, and then I saw her stoop down. And when she stood up, she had no gun. She'd buried it under the culvert. She looked so
awful
, Jeanie! But she'd just done a murder, so of course—and she went away. Oh Jeanie, Jeanie! She'll be hanged, if they find out, won't she?”

The two walked slowly on.

“Do you think the police will know it's Marjorie's?” asked Sarah fearfully.

“I'm afraid they'll easily find out. What made you interfere, my dear?”

“I couldn't just let them find it! And they were dragging the pond. They were looking everywhere; I knew they'd find it soon! I thought I'd hide it in a better place. Grim's Grave. I thought it might be safe there. If I prayed to Grim—”

“My dear kiddie!”

“Well!”

“Oh well, it's natural, I suppose! I wonder,” speculated Jeanie, “how many things are buried there on top of Grim? If it occurred to you so easily, you won't have been the first to think of it in all these centuries!”

Agnes was in the little panelled parlour, and alone, for once, when Jeanie arrived at Cleedons. A glittering tea-equipage fit for a reception stood on the low table beside her, with enough untouched bread and butter, cakes and little sandwiches to feed a party. The crimson curtains were drawn to shut out the dusk.

“Alone for once, Agnes?” asked Jeanie a little timidly, not quite certain of her welcome, for she had come uninvited.

A rueful expression came over Agnes's face.

“You may well say ‘for once'!” she murmured. “What with policemen and relations and the doctor, I get no peace. Dr. Hall's so determined that I ought to be ill that he calls every day—to make me so, I suppose. And as for Tamsin Wills! Really, Jeanie, I don't know what to do about that girl! She fusses over me and follows me about till I'm nearly crazy. What have I done to arouse all this horrible devotion? Really, it's like being a schoolmistress again.”

Jeanie winced, for there had been a time when Agnes had roused her devotion, and she had not thought, then, that Agnes found it horrible.

“We had a fearful row here about ten minutes ago. Tamsin flung off out of the house. Really, Jeanie, I don't know what's the matter with her! She'll have to go. She's been getting more and more peculiar ever since she made that dead set at Mr. Fone, and he had to show her so plainly he didn't like her.”

“Mr. Fone! I wouldn't have thought Tamsin was exactly in love with Mr. Fone!” said Jeanie, a trifle uncomfortably, for there had been real malice in Agnes's tone.

“Of course not, now! She hates him, no doubt. Because he didn't agree with her about their being soulmates. I believe he said they were on quite different spirals or something.”

Jeanie laughed.

“
I
believe you're just making that up!”

Agnes smiled, taking the accusation as a tribute to her powers of entertainment.

“She'll have to go. I've had enough of it,” said she, stretching a little in her low chair and yawning delicately, like a lazy cat. “We had that awful Peel woman here this afternoon. Tamsin saw her. That's really what started the row. Naturally, Tamsin's very anxious that Sarah shan't go back to her mother and leave Tamsin out of a job. But after all, as I told her, a mother has the first claim on her own child.”

“Oh, surely,” said Jeanie uneasily, “if you're Sarah's guardian, Agnes, you wouldn't—”

A fretful look came at once, at this hint of criticism, to Agnes's face.

“Of course I wouldn't, but I wanted to annoy Tamsin, because I'm sick of her bullying and fussing, and I won't have her dictating to me. Of course, if I'm Sarah's guardian I'll carry out Robert's wishes. I don't like children, and Sarah doesn't like me, but of course I do as Robert wanted. But it's no pleasure to me to have Sarah here; it's a duty, and I wish somebody could convince Mrs. Peel of it. I shall keep the child simply, simply because Robert wished it!” said Agnes, searching around among her cushions for a handkerchief.

“I'm sorry, Agnes,” said Jeanie penitently.

“Oh, it's not you, Jeanie. It's Tamsin. She's really quite intolerable!”

“Why not send her away?”

“I'd like to, only well, what could I do with Sarah? All the bother of finding another tutor or deciding on a school. I really feel I haven't the strength to make any changes just yet.”

Agnes blew her nose and, standing up, poked a log down in the fire with the toe of her shoe. She looked very frail standing there in the firelight in her long black gown, and Jeanie looked at her with a half-unwilling admiration. A beautiful dress: and why should not a dress of mourning be beautiful? Must death be surrounded everywhere with ugliness? Thin lips, drooping at present, beautifully touched with artificial colour: and why not? Thin, fine-cut eyelids, with nature's somewhat earthy shadows beautifully transformed with mascara to a frail violet: and again, why not? Well, it was only four days since poor Mr. Molyneux's death: how could so newly-widowed a wife as Agnes find heart for that elaborate study of her own appearance?

“Tamsin didn't like Robert,” said Agnes suddenly. “And of course he couldn't endure her, really. She wasn't his sort of girl. And lately he'd begun to think she wasn't up to her job. I think he was wrong there. Tamsin's very well qualified, and not at all a bad teacher. Only of course Sarah's never liked her, and that weighed a lot with Robert. He was thinking of getting rid of her, I know. And she knew it, of course. Anyhow, she didn't like him. She was jealous of him, too—you know, Jeanie, what extraordinary notions these repressed kind of girls like Tamsin can get in their heads! Only I didn't realise till lately how abnormal she was. She's getting worse, I suppose. Really, I don't think she's quite sane!”

Agnes's voice went on in a low peevish tone, with little fretful sighs. Evidently, Tamsin had behaved very badly that afternoon.

“Oh Agnes, why not tell her to go, if it worries you so?”

Agnes's eyes turned, wide and dark, upon Jeanie's face. She said with a little sob:

“I used not to mind her disliking Robert. But now— it seems too horrible! Too horrible, that she shouldn't like him, and he's dead! Oh Jeanie!”

She half-turned, and let her face sink for a second upon Jeanie's shoulder.

“When we had that row this afternoon—when she was so unbearable—I felt quite
ashamed
of the suspicions that came into my head. But I can't get rid of them! I keep thinking,
Tamsin
was in the Tower room.
Tamsin
could have—oh no! No!”

“But Agnes, it wasn't from the Tower that the shot came. It was from the other side of the orchard.”

“Who says so? That lunatic William Fone! Who would take any notice of him?” asked Agnes scornfully.

“But there's no reason why he shouldn't be speaking the truth, Agnes, even if he is a lunatic! Unless of course he shot Mr. Molyneux himself.”

Agnes raised wide, frightened eyes from Jeanie's shoulder. She looked paper-pale and fragile in the firelight.

“Tamsin tried to make us think he did,” she uttered slowly. “Don't you remember? Right at the beginning, Tamsin tried to make us suspect Mr. Fone? Oh Jeanie! Was it because she had done it herself? Did she know how easily it could be done from one of the windows in the Tower?”

They looked at one another. Jeanie felt quite a little chill of horror. What more likely than that crime should flower in the soil of malice? And had not Jeanie herself thought Tamsin Wills a very spring of malice? Then her common sense reasserted itself.

“I don't think you need torture yourself with that suspicion, Agnes. The truth's bad enough. The police have found a rifle that was hidden in the orchard-ditch.”

“Do you mean, they know who did it?”

“No, they don't
know
, but—”

But Agnes, when Jeanie mentioned Marjorie Dasent's name, looked first a little contemptuous, then amused, and then, drying her eyes, laughed the whole idea to scorn.

“Marjorie! Oh no! She hasn't enough imagination even to
think
of—oh no! It's absurd! I don't care how many rifles of hers they've found! Somebody else must have been using it!”

“But Sarah said—”

“Sarah! Now,
she's
got too much imagination. She probably made up the whole thing. She's a little romancer, that child, Jeanie!”

“I dare say. But there's a difference between romancing and—”

“No, there isn't. Look at that mother of hers! Hardly knows what she's saying half the time!”

“Yes, but—” 

“Oh, no, Jeanie! Marjorie Dasent! It's ridiculous! She simply hasn't got it in her! But Tamsin—”

Agnes shuddered.

“Oh, I suppose I'm an imaginative fool myself! Sarah and I are a pair, aren't we?”

She sank into her low chair again, and leaning her elbows on her knees looked, as if for comfort, into the roaring fire. She loved heat, and shut windows and drawn curtains, and scented rooms, and cushions. She was like a sleek, thin cat in her tastes and her delicate ways. Jeanie, who was not, was beginning to feel oppressed in this hot-house atmosphere. She unbuttoned her knitted jacket.

“My dear, don't keep Tamsin here! Tell her to find another job!”

“She'll have to stay till after the inquest, anyway. I can't suddenly turn her out of the house!”

“Shall I come and stay here?” suggested Jeanie, with a good deal of self-sacrifice, for she did not relish the idea of being a buffer between Agnes and Tamsin. The days were past when making herself a slave to Agnes's imperious whims would have been happiness to her. “I could keep Tamsin away from you. And take the housekeeping off your hands.”

Agnes replied wearily:

“Oh, Tamsin does that. She's marvellous at any sort of organising. You wouldn't think it, but she is. It's sweet of you to suggest it, Jeanie, when I know how you'd hate it. But it's all right, thank you. I mustn't encourage myself in these stupid fancies. Besides, darling, Tamsin hates you, and I don't think you like her much. You'd probably quarrel.”

Jeanie flushed. 

“I think you consider her too much. If you feel about her as you say you do, you ought to get rid of her!”

“There! See how nicely you'd get on with her!” murmured Agnes with a faint sparkle of mockery. “No, Jeanie, to be fair to her, she's marvellous in lots of ways. She saves me no end of bother. And I suppose there's always something one has to put up with. But it's sweet of you to suggest coming here, Jeanie. You are kind.”

It was odd how her caressing voice suddenly broke off sharp on a kind of gasp. Jeanie, who was standing up divesting herself of her jacket and laying it over a chair-back, looked at her friend in surprise to see what had startled her.

Agnes was still sitting with her elbows on her knees, but all the relaxation of her pose was gone. Her arms were rigid, her hands contracted, her chin lifted from them and averted, as she stared with eyes that looked suddenly dark and large at something on the floor. Her lips were parted. She looked quite foolish—stupefied or half-witted. She looked as though she had suddenly seen an adder on the floor by her feet, head raised to strike.

All Jeanie could see was the contents of her jacket-pocket which, as she hung it over her chair-arm, had emptied itself upon the floor. There was a shilling, a pencil, a lipstick and the broken string of pearls which Eustace Agatos had found under the stairs at Yew Tree Cottage. Jeanie stooped to pick them up. But Agnes was quicker.

“Pearls, Jeanie?” she asked, in a strange, uncertain voice.

“Don't I wish they were! I'd sell them to pay some of the builder's bills!”

“But—are they yours?”

Jeanie laughed, though she was a little surprised, too.

“Do you suspect me of burglary?”

“No, but—”

“They're treasure trove. They were in the cupboard under the stairs at Yew Tree Cottage.”

Still holding the pearls in her hand, gazing as if hypnotised at the little brilliant clasp, Agnes repeated, still in that slow, uncertain way:

“At Yew Tree Cottage?”

She raised her eyes a moment from the pearls and looked in front of her, frowning slightly. Her lips formed the word:

“But—”

“They're only Woolworth's!”

“Are they?”

“Surely they're not real?” asked Jeanie. “You know more about pearls than I do.”

“Oh—no,” said Agnes uncertainly. “No, of course not. I shouldn't think so. How could they be? Is this all there were? I don't know anything about pearls. No, of course they couldn't be real. Only this clasp looks rather good. I'll tell you what, Jeanie. The man in town that set my opals knows quite a lot about pearls. Next time I go up I'll take them to him. He wouldn't charge anything for valuing them. If you leave them with me, I'll see to it.”

“I shouldn't have thought it was worth the bother,” said Jeanie, somewhat puzzled. “Anyway, I think I'll have them back now.” She held out her hand. “They're just what I want for a still-life I'm painting,” she said mendaciously. She was determined, she knew not quite why, not to leave the pearls with Agnes. Agnes obviously wanted them and would not say why. Very well, Jeanie would keep them until she had found out why Agnes wanted them. To this queer distrust, their one-time friendship had descended.