Shroud of Silence (7 page)

The indirect approach worked better that I’d expected. Jane had lifted her head at last and was leaning forward to see past Tansy. I felt the stare of her big round eyes and dared not meet it, for fear she would see right through my tactics.

“Just
little baskets, so big ...” I sketched my hands in the air. “Afterwards I’d hang them up in my bedroom. Sometimes I’d have as many as a dozen all at once.”

I’d managed to catch the little girl’s imagination, and I think even poor Tansy understood what I was after. Certainly, everyone else did. I sensed a deepening of Drew’s respect. As for Gwen, she was beaming in the reflected glory of her protégée’s success.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself, too—until I caught Corinne’s expression of sheer malice. I looked away hastily. Verity and Felix were grinning, and I realized they were perfectly well aware of their sister’s smoldering rage. From ringside seats they were quietly enjoying the build-up to an inevitable eruption.

Drew excused himself the minute the meal was over. I fixed with Tansy that we’d set out about three-thirty, and she took Jane away upstairs for a short rest.

Gwen hiked herself up from her chair with a grunt. “Come on, Kim, let’s have our coffee outside. I’ll go and put a bomb under Pinky.”

I was glad to make a getaway. But even outside, a little distance along the terrace, I could hear the rise and fall of sniping voices.

I tried to shut the Harper tribe out of my mind, settling down in the comfortable garden chair.

And then, from just inside the window, Corinne’s voice sailed out and hit me squarely. She spoke coolly and with deliberation, and I knew I was meant to overhear every word.

“She won’t be staying long at Mildenhall. Don’t either of you make any mistake about that.”

As it turned out, the walk with Tansy and Jane was a great success. I thanked heaven fervently that chestnut twigs could somehow be tortured into shapes actually resembling baskets. Good enough, at any rate, to catch a five-year-old’s fancy. All in all, I reckoned I’d made quite a hit with Jane.

Once or twice, when she was completely absorbed weaving the bendy twigs in and out, she forgot to stammer.

“Look,” she cried excitedly, “I can do it for myself.”

I shot out a restraining hand to check a doting gush of praise from Tansy. Lucidly, the message got through to her.

“You do learn quickly,” I said to Jane seriously. “Already you’re nearly as good at it as I am.”

She gave me a shy smile of pleasure. Achievement was something rare in her young life.

But I wasn’t fooled by the easy conquest. I’d faced rusted prejudice in parents often enough, but this was in a different category. Corinne had declared war on me. For some strange reason she was on the wrong side in the fight for Jane’s speech.

I decided to tackle Gwen about this unaccountable obstacle.

On Sunday morning she put in an appearance around ten o’clock. She’d been hitting the bottle again the previous evening, and looked distinctly owl-eyed.

“How about you taking me out for a drive?” I suggested.

She looked surprised at my use of her own forceful tactics. But as she was off back to town first thing Monday, I hadn’t any time to waste.

“All right,” she agreed reluctantly. ‘When do you want to set out?”

“As soon as you like. I’ve got something else to do.”

I’d have enjoyed going just for the ride. It was the sort of lovely autumn morning that would blot out the memory of two weeks’ solid rain. A shady tracery of baring branches dappled the lanes, lazy vapor rising where the sun discovered remnants of last night’s dew.

But I had a job to do. Questions to get answered.

“Corinne doesn’t seem to like me much,” I began baldly.

Gwen managed a painful grin as she buzzed the little car up a hill.

“Corinne likes Corinne likes Corinne,” she said with heavy humor.

“That I can well believe.” I longed to ask how a man like Drew ever came to marry such a woman. But that wasn’t really the point. “I wish I could understand her attitude, though. I mean, it’s as if she didn’t want her daughter to be helped.”

“Her motives are certainly pretty complicated.”

Gwen swung off abruptly into a narrow winding lane. She had to concentrate on driving as we whizzed between high earth banks. When the road widened again, Gwen said deliberately and very sourly, “If you want my opinion, Corinne’s a thoroughgoing bitch.”

I thought it wisest to say nothing to that.

Gwen charged on, working herself up. “Do you realize she never intended to have a baby at all. She shouted from the rooftops that poor Jane was a miscalculation on her part, and she’s always resented the child. There won’t be any more, that’s been made crystal clear. Of course, Drew would like a son. He’s worked hard to keep Mildenhall going, and it’s only natural he wants the line to continue.” Gwen paused, and shot a tentative look at me. “Mind you, the way things are between them these days I doubt if they’d ever get together again, even if Corinne did have a change of heart about children.”

 “As it turns out,” I said carefully, “it may perhaps have been unfortunate that your sister was on hand to take Jane off her mother’s shoulders. Otherwise, Corinne would have been forced to take more interest,”

Gwen was scornful. “Don’t you believe it. If Tansy hadn’t been around, then she’d have got a nanny for the child. Never mind the cost. Never mind that Drew was finding it hard to make ends meet in those days. What Corrine wants, Corinne gets. Those Harpers are all the same.”

“Yet there seems to be no family feeling between them,” I ventured. “They’re always needling one another.”

“Selfish swine,” she growled. “Verity and Felix are nothing but a pair of layabouts. They’ve just fastened on to Drew like leeches.”

“Don’t they do anything?” I asked. “No jobs?”

Gwen laughed harshly. “Verity occasionally does a few days modeling when she’s in the mood. As for Felix, he’s always talking about making himself a bit of commission, but don’t ask me doing what.”

“And they live at Mildenhall permanently?”

“They use it as their base—a sort of free hotel.”

“You mean ever since Drew and Corinne were married?”

“Well no, it wasn’t so bad at first. But this last couple of years they’ve more or less taken up residence.”

I tucked that piece of information away. Every darned thing at Mildenhall seemed to date from two years back.

“I can’t imagine why Drew puts up with them,” I remarked.

“Because Corinne insists, of course.”

“I wonder why? From the way they keep getting at her, you’d think she’d be glad to see the last of them.”

Gwen sighed heavily. “God alone knows what it’s all about! They’re a queer lot all right, those Harpers.”

* * * *

There was an almighty fuss brewing when I emerged into the hall after breakfast on Monday morning. Jane, neat in a school uniform of blue blouse and gray skirt, was waiting to be taken to kindergarten. And nobody to take her, apparently.

Tansy was pattering down the stairs in great agitation. From below Drew called up to her impatiently. “Well, what does she say?”

“I’m afraid Corinne says her headache is too bad, Drew dear,” Tansy twittered. “She says if you can’t manage to take Jane yourself, then why don’t you get one of the workmen ...?”

He exploded. “Damn it all. There are three people besides me in this house who can drive. Surely to God it’s not asking too much? They know I’ve got an important customer coming to see me in a minute.”

Jane was pulling on a crimson blazer. To most people it would look like she was placidly getting herself ready. But I knew all the signs of a drooping heart.

I cut right across Tansy’s tremulous wail of regret that she’d never learned to drive.

“I do wish you’d let
me
take Jane to school, Mr. Barrington. I’d love the chance of a drive on a beautiful morning like this.”

For Jane’s sake I was piling on the eagerness. But my effort was completely ruined by her father piling on the gratitude.

“That’s extremely good of you, Miss Bennett If you’re really quite sure you wouldn’t mind?”

I frowned at him to lay off the thanks. “As I said, I shall enjoy it.”

“Well then, you can take either car—the Rover or the little Austin. I’ll come with you to the garage.”

The Rover looked a bit hefty to me, so I settled for the Austin.

Drew gave me directions. “It’s quite straightforward. Take the driveway down through the fish farm, and turn left when you reach the road. Gilham is about four miles. You’ll see the school on the right as you run into the village.”

Jane accepted her father’s goodbye kiss and clambered into the car beside me. She didn’t look round as we drove off, but stared straight ahead, silent and serious, refusing to respond to anything I tried saying to her.

At the ponds I spotted Bill Wayne and two other men working on the banks. They were hacking out water weed with long-handled sickles. Hearing the car, they all three glanced up.

“Look, there’s Bill,” I said brightly, grinning back at his thumbs up sign. “Why don’t you wave to him?”

But Jane wouldn’t. I think at that moment she hated the whole adult race. Somehow or other I had to break through the solid stone wall that Jane had erected between us.

I’d often found a useful trick in such circumstances was to do the wrong thing, hoping to be corrected. An opportunity soon came. We had reached the point where the Mildenhall drive joined the public road. Drew had told me to turn left. Without hesitation I swung the car to the right.

Jane came to sudden life. She struggled into speech, forcing the words out.

“Not … not this way.”

“Oh dear.” I pulled up and put the car into reverse. “What a good thing you noticed, Jane. It would have been too bad if my silliness had made you late for school.”

I was rewarded with a shy little smile of pleasure.

As we bowled along the quiet lane, I began to sing softly.

Yankee doodle went to town,

Upon a little pony,

He stuck a feather in his cap,

And called it macaroni.

Jane was half-turned in her seat, looking at me open-mouthed, intrigued by the unfamiliar song.

I gave her a quick smile. “American children sing that,” I said. I didn’t ask her to try it for herself. I just went through the rhyme again,  and finished:

Yankee doodle doodle do,

Yankee doodle dandy.

Presently a thin little voice took it up with me as I started once more. She was hesitant, unsure of the words. But she didn’t splutter over them. The simple act of singing had cut through the stammering habit.

I didn’t compliment her. But as it turned out I did something worse.

“Who usually brings you to school,” I said thoughtlessly, “Mummy or Daddy?”

There was silence. We were just swinging through the gates of the nursery school, but when we had drawn up beside the low white-fronted building, I was able to look at her.

Jane’s face was closed against me, her lips pressed tight. She got out of the car and walked away slowly. I watched her welcomed at the door by the teacher, who saluted me with a lift of the hand. Jane disappeared inside without looking back.

I wondered how she got on at school. Did she have as much trouble with her speech there as at home? It would be helpful to have a chat with her teacher sometime, but this was hardly the moment.

I had arranged with Drew to keep the car for the whole morning, and collect Jane again at noon. I’d explained there were a few things I wanted to buy. In fact, I had something different in mind, something for which I needed to be alone.

It was a pleasant half-hour’s drive to Chichester through wooded downland country. As I drew near I glimpsed the cathedral spire, a graceful needle against the sky. But I doubted if I’d have time for sightseeing today.

The cheerful parking lot attendant told me where to find the offices of a local newspaper. I was counting on Brian Hearne’s death being newsworthy enough to have got more than just a brief mention. I wanted the full facts because I needed to know what I was up against.

The fatal accident two years ago seemed to have shattered the whole family, creating an atmosphere at Mildenhall unfit for any child. I felt more and more certain as time went by that there was some sort of connection between Brian’s death and Jane’s stammering.

A spotty youth behind the counter swallowed half a bun in one lump and inquired painfully if he could help me.

“I wanted to look up something that happened about a couple of years back. Round about this time ... in the autumn.”

He pulled a long face. “Can’t you get nearer than that?”

“Sorry to be so vague.”

He fished around in a cupboard and finally produced two enormous files. Obligingly, he carted them across to a table for me, and pulled up a chair. “This one goes to the end of September, and that once takes over from there until the end of the year.”

“Thank you.”

The task looked formidable. Each edition would have to be combed right through. A drowning accident might have been pushed well down column on an inside page.

I kept stopping to check the many headlines that could have fitted.
Drowned Man Verdict ...
Coroner’s Surprise Decision ...
that sort of thing. When finally I found what I was looking for the story was much bigger than I’d expected.

A banner headline announced blackly: VERDICT ON MILDENHALL DROWNING. Below it a photograph of the dead man grinned out. There was an unmistakable look of dissipation about Brian Hearne, yet with thick dark hair and white teeth he had most of the trimmings of a handsome man. A man, I’d have said at a glance, who would know his own rather dubious mind.

I skated through the report, plucking out the main points. I hit a big surprise at once. The body had been found by Bill Wayne.
“It was early morning—only half-light. I saw something white in the rainbow pond floating near the edge by the roadway. He was dressed in just shirt and trousers….”