Poison In The Pen (21 page)

Miss Silver left Holly Cottage with the consciousness of a task accomplished. Actually two tasks. The scrap of paper which she had detached from the letter received by Miss Maggie and upon which she had herself scrawled the letters TIL with the sharpened end of a match dipped in ink had successfully served a part of its purpose. She also had the satisfaction of leaving Miss Eccles in a roused and stimulated state. She walked down a flagged path and out of a rustic gate, only to lift the latch of a similar gate and to walk up a twin path to the door of Willow Cottage.

Miss Wayne opened to her in an even more tentative manner than Miss Eccles had done. She had her door upon the chain and peered through the gap, to become profuse in apologies when she discovered that it was Miss Silver who was waiting on the step.

“Oh dear, I am so sorry. It’s so disagreeable to be kept waiting in the dark, but I’m afraid I’m apt to be nervous when I’m here alone. My dear sister was always so strong-minded, and Joyce is too. But do come in—do please come in.”

As Miss Silver stepped across the threshold she became aware of a very decided smell of gas. She remarked upon it.

“Do you think that one of the burners has blown out on your gas stove?”

Miss Wayne appeared flustered.

“I was putting on a kettle and I dropped the match before the gas had caught. I have opened the kitchen window and the smell will soon be gone. I always think there is nothing so handy as gas to cook by, but it does smell. We used to have it all over the house, you know, but Esther was nervous about it, so when the Grid came through the village we went on to electricity. It cost quite a lot, but it is much cleaner and safer—only I don’t care about it for cooking, so we didn’t have the gas cut off.”

They had arrived in the sitting-room. Miss Silver made her way towards a chair.

“Oh—” Miss Wayne appeared to be surprised. “I thought perhaps you had come for some more of your things.”

“And for a little talk with you,” said Miss Silver.

There was a small fire on the hearth. Miss Wayne came over to it and sat down in her usual chair.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “And there is so much to talk about, isn’t there? Poor Maggie—how is she? And Valentine—it’s a terrible thing for a girl to be jilted like that at the last minute. You know, I thought something had gone wrong when he didn’t turn up for the wedding rehearsal. That story of an accident! I suppose he just felt he couldn’t go through with it—and if he was only marrying her for her money, it was much better for it to be broken off. Her mother’s marriage was a most unhappy one, you know. One wouldn’t wish poor Valentine to have the same experience.”

Miss Silver said, “No.”

Renie Wayne got out her handkerchief and rubbed her nose with it.

“Now you think I am gossiping. My dear sister was so very strict about anything like that, but when you are fond of people, how can you help being interested in what is happening to them? It isn’t as if one wanted to say anything unkind!” She emphasized the word strongly and went on. “Especially now that there has been this dreadful tragedy about Colonel Repton. And to happen as it did, with all of us there in the next room! It’s really too terrible for words!”

“Yes, it is terrible.”

Renie Wayne flowed on.

“And poor Mettie Eccles had just taken him in his tea! I’ve been round of course, but she doesn’t seem to want to see anyone. She should think how it looks—giving way like that! Of course we all know she was devoted to him, but he was a married man and people will talk if she goes on shutting herself up. Somebody really ought to tell her so!”

Miss Silver gave a faint reproving cough.

“I do not think that it would be advisable.”

Miss Wayne sniffed and rubbed briskly at her nose.

“We can all see what comes of shutting oneself up. One hasn’t to look any farther than next door for that! That dreadful Mr. Barton and his cats—I have really often thought that I would go to the police about them. The one that he calls Abimelech is positively unsafe! Do you know, Miss Silver, the wretched creature actually growls at me! Only this afternoon—” She broke off with an effect of suddenness and dabbed at her nose. “But really, Mettie Eccles would do well to be warned! Naturally, poor Colonel Repton’s death has been a terrible shock to us all.”

Suspicion is one thing, certainty is another. For a moment Miss Silver was aware of Jason Leigh saying as they crossed the Green, “Someone came round from the back of the Croft in the dark, and the cat growled. Barton says there’s only one person that he growls at. He wouldn’t tell me who it was.” And now here, in Miss Wayne’s sitting-room, the information which Mr. Barton had withheld was being presented to her. She said,

“Murder is a terrible thing, Miss Wayne.”

Renie Wayne gave a small exaggerated start.

“Murder? Oh, no, it was suicide. Because his wife—surely you must have heard that his wife—”

Miss Silver repeated the offending word.

“Colonel Repton was murdered.”

“Oh, no—”

Miss Silver went on firmly.

“He was murdered because he had said that he knew who had written those anonymous letters. It is not possible to say whether he really knew or not, but he was overheard to say that he did. What he said was repeated, and because of it he was murdered, just as Doris Pell was murdered because she knew, and Connie Brooke because she too said that she knew.”

The hand with the cambric handkerchief fell into Miss Wayne’s lap. She said in a fluttering voice.

“Oh—oh—how dreadful! Are you sure?”

Miss Silver said, “Yes, I am sure.” She opened her shabby handbag and took out of it the small torn scrap of paper which she had shown to Mettie Eccles. She held it out now to Irene Wayne. “Would you like to know where and in what circumstances this was found?”

The small eyes became focussed upon the hand and what it held, the voice sharpened.

“No—no. What is it? I haven’t the least idea—”

Miss Silver said,

“I think that you have. I think that you have seen something very like it before. I think it was because of a scrap of paper like this that Doris Pell came to her death. I think you saw it in her hand, as you are seeing it in mine.”

Quite suddenly, as if she were looking at a dissolving picture, Miss Silver saw before her not Irene Wayne, not in fact a human creature at all, but a ferret with small fierce eyes and a twitching nose. It was a ferret that had been muzzled and caged, and then all at once had found itself free to nose about and sniff out its prey, to lurk, and bite in secret. There was a spasm of something like terror, and then what was almost a snarl.

“Who gave you that? Who gave it to you?”

Miss Silver said,

“It came to me, Miss Wayne.”

The small face was distorted by fury, by fear, and then by fury again.

“What do you think you are going to do with it?”

“There is only one thing that I can do.”

“But you won’t do it!” said Renie Wayne in a small sharp voice. “You won’t do it, because I can stop you! You think yourself very clever, don’t you, coming down here and spying into things that don’t concern you! But I can be clever too! You didn’t think of that, did you, but you had better think about it now! None of these stupid people thought about it! I was just Miss Renie whom they didn’t have to bother about! Esther could be put on their committees, and Mettie Eccles, and that interfering Nora Mallett, and if it wasn’t one of them who would be chairman it would be one of the others! But nobody ever thought about asking me! I was the one who could be left out! Why, Maggie didn’t even ask me to the party the other night! I didn’t let them see that I minded—I was too clever for that! But I found a way to punish them all right!” Her voice trailed down into a gasping whisper. “Long ago—oh, long ago—at Little Poynton— that’s when it began—and it was all quite easy to do. But Esther found out and she stopped me. She said some very cruel things and she stopped me. But when she was dead I could do as I liked!” Her tone changed on the words. There came into it an extraordinary and dreadful gaiety, a smile stretched the dry lips. She tossed the wisp of a handkerchief in the air and caught it again. “You don’t know how I enjoyed myself!” she said. “Nobody knew! I put on a black dress, and I cried when people were there, but I laughed when I was alone! There was a woman who called me a little dried-up faggot—I heard her! Well, I knew something she had done—oh, years ago! I put it in one of the letters, and next time I saw her in church she didn’t look nearly so pleased with herself—oh dear, no! That was what was such fun, you know—sending off the letters and then watching the people to see how they looked when they had had them!”

Miss Silver had been looking at her gravely. The balance of a mind which had been long disturbed had now, and perhaps finally, slipped. For the moment at any rate, fear of discovery with its accompaniment of disgrace and retribution were lost in the egotism and self-adulation of the criminal. She began to consider how this interview could be ended.

Irene Wayne went on talking.

“Doris Pell was a very stupid girl. When people are as stupid as that, it is amusing to try and stir them up. She didn’t like me, you know. I could tell when she was trying on that blue dress I had when I came out of mourning for Esther—she didn’t like touching me! I sent her two letters saying that everyone knew she was an immoral girl.” She gave a small shrill twitter. “Well, she didn’t like that! And I suppose she thought herself very clever when she came here to fit me on and she picked up the piece of paper which had got torn off her letter. I don’t know how you got hold of it, but I suppose you think you are very clever too! You had better take care not to be too clever, because—what happened to Doris?”

Miss Silver said gravely,

“You pushed her off the bridge and she was drowned.”

Irene Wayne laughed—a dreadful sound.

“She hit her head against one of those big stones and she was drowned. It isn’t at all a good thing to make me angry, you know. I can punish people. I punished Connie Brooke. She was going about saying that she knew who had written the letters, so I punished her. Esther was having sleeping-tablets before she died. I told the doctor that I had thrown them away, but I hadn’t—I kept them. Did you know that my back door key fitted the lock at the Croft? I found it out quite by accident, because Connie forgot her key one night when I was with her, and I said, ‘Oh, well, we’ll try mine,’ and it fitted. So all I had to do was to let myself in by Connie’s back door whilst she was up at the party they hadn’t asked me to, and there was her cocoa, left all ready on the stove! I had crushed up my dear Esther’s tablets—there were quite a lot of them—and I stirred them in and came away. Of course I was very careful to see that they were quite dissolved. She shouldn’t have made me angry—she really shouldn’t. Colonel Repton was very foolish that way too. I punished him. I was very clever about that, you know. Sleeping-tablets wouldn’t have done for him, but I remembered the stuff Esther got in for the wasps’ nest in the pear-tree two years ago. She couldn’t bear wasps. She said the stuff was very strong, and any that was left must be destroyed, but I hid it away. You never know when something like that will come in useful, do you? I put some of it in a bottle mixed up with a little whisky, and I slipped it into my bag when I went up to the Work Party at the Manor. That girl Florrie tattles, you know—very wrong of her, but girls always do—so everyone in the village knew that Colonel Repton had taken to keeping a decanter of whisky in the study. It was clever of me to remember that, wasn’t it? Well, then of course I had to find an opportunity of putting my stuff into the decanter. I slipped out of the drawing-room—I was doing white work, so of course my hands had to be very clean, and I said I had a smudge on my finger. And do you know, just as I got into the hall Colonel Repton came out of the study and went into the cloakroom.” She gave a little tittering laugh. “So I didn’t wash my hands after all! Do you know what I did instead? I went into the study, and there was the decanter on the writing-table. Not at all the thing—oh, not at all! I only had to take out the stopper, pop in the stuff out of my bottle, and put the stopper back again. The room positively reeked of smoke. There was a most dreadful foul old pipe lying on the table. Quite disgusting—I was thankful to get back to the drawing room! I was very clever, wasn’t I? So now you see how foolish you would be to make me angry.”

Miss Silver rose to her feet. She had kept her eyes upon Miss Wayne in the blue dress which Doris Pell had made, but she was not prepared for the sudden movement which took her from the sofa to the door. There was in it a suggestion, a highly unpleasant suggestion, of a springing animal. Renie Wayne stood there against the panels, a little crouched, a little as if she might spring again. Then she said,

“I suppose you think you are going to go away and tell a lot of lies about me! But you don’t suppose I shall let you do that, do you?”

Miss Silver said in her quiet voice,

“You cannot stop me.”

There was that horrid laugh again.

“Can’t I? Well, we shall see! You know, you were very stupid to come here this evening, because I was in the middle of some really rather important business. You noticed the smell of gas when you came into the house—”

Miss Silver had a moment of grave apprehension, but her voice was steady as she said,

“Yes?”

Miss Wayne bridled.

“Oh, yes, indeed! But it wasn’t an escape from the gas stove—you were quite wrong about that. You see that nice big cupboard where the water cistern is—we had to put it there when we had the plumbing altered—well, there is a gas-bracket there. Not incandescent, you know—just the ordinary old-fashioned burner. Well, we left it alone because it was useful in very cold weather to keep the pipes from freezing. Esther was always nervous about it—she would get up two or three times in the night when we had it on. But as I said to her, ‘If there was any escape, you would smell it at once, your room being next door,’ so she left it alone. And now it’s being very useful indeed, because that’s where the gas is escaping. The tap is turned on and the door is shut, and there isn’t any window because it is only a cupboard.”