The Chinese Shawl (19 page)

After a time spent in thought she proceeded to the study and, finding it empty, rang up Randal March.

“I have some information for you, and I think we had better speak French.”

This opening, delivered in the stiff grammatical French of his schoolroom days, roused him from the pleasant half hour of relaxation which he had intended to take before allowing his mind to dwell upon the Priory murder. He replied readily, but with that indomitable British accent which exemplifies the ability of the English to withstand foreign influences.

Miss Silver continued briskly.

“I do not wish to incur any further censure for withholding evidence, so I think I had better communicate a conversation which I have just overheard. Just a moment first, if you please.”

She laid down the receiver and went noiselessly to the door and opened it. The wide passage was empty. From the morning-room almost immediately opposite came the sound of orchestral music on the wireless. With an approving nod she closed the door and returned to the telephone.

“Yes, that is quite all right. I thought I would just make sure that we could speak privately. Now I will tell you what I overheard.”

When she had repeated Florrie’s conversation with William Shepherd she said soberly,

“I do not know what you think about it, but it appears to me that this girl may be in danger. It is a very risky thing to blackmail a murderer, and she is the light, silly type who takes a risk through ignorance and vanity.”

There was a pause.

March said, “Have you spoken to her? Does she know that she was overheard?”

“Oh, no. I would not take such a step without letting you know.”

Ten miles away, the Superintendent smiled. His Miss Silver had taken more important steps than this without informing the police. Her virtue amused him. At the same time he knew it to be an index of her concern. He said,

“Would you like to see her?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I do not think so. She would not tell me anything. I know her type. She would not talk to a woman, though she might to a man. It is the same girl who brought you the fragments of the shawl. I do not know whether you observed her.”

“Not particularly.”

Her voice became severe.

“You should have done so. She was making eyes at you. Her manner to me was pert. She is that type. It would be useless for me to speak to her, but with your approval I will endeavour to caution her indirectly. She will be helping the butler at dinner tonight as the other girl is out, and if I could bring the conversation to the subject of blackmail, it might be possible to frighten her from pursuing a very dangerous course. I should also have an opportunity of observing the reactions of other members of the party. In fact the whole thing might prove instructive.”

Randal March didn’t see how it could do any harm. He said so, and Miss Silver rang off.

Passing through the hall, she encountered Carey Desborough and requested a word with him. As voices could be heard from the drawing-room which he had just left, she opened the door of Tanis Lyle’s sitting-room and took him in there. It had the bleak, desolate look which comes so quickly to a room that has fallen out of use. It was clean and neat—too neat. Sofa and chairs undented; cushions that no one had leaned against; a carpet on which no one had trodden; ash-trays all clean, all set, each in its appropriate place; dead air in the room; no flowers. It might have been a designer’s room in an exhibition of furniture. It chilled Carey to the bone.

Miss Silver appeared unmoved.

“Will you do something for me, Mr. Desborough?” she said. “It is really quite a small thing, but I should be glad of your co-operation.”

He said, “Will you tell me what it is?” and saw her smile.

“You are cautious, Mr. Desborough—have you any Scottish blood? It is really quite a small matter. I should be glad if you would assist me to introduce the subject of blackmail at dinner tonight.”

He was considerably startled, and showed it.

“Miss Silver!”

She came closer to him and said, dropping her voice,

“Has anyone been trying to blackmail you? Or Miss Laura?”

Carey recovered himself. His manner was quite natural when he said,

“Not me. I’d have gone to the police—it’s the only way with blackmail. And not Laura. She would have told me.”

Miss Silver nodded.

“Someone in this house is blackmailing, and someone is being blackmailed. That is why I want to talk about blackmail at dinner tonight. Will you help me?”

He hesitated for a moment. Then he said,

“I don’t like it very much.”

Miss Silver looked at him with gravity.

“I do not like it at all, pray believe that. But, Mr. Desborough, consider the situation. We have had a murder here. A very foolish and ignorant person is now attempting to blackmail the murderer. Can you imagine anything more dangerous?”

“Frankly, no.”

“The conversation in which I hope you will assist is intended to deter the blackmailer. If it has that effect it will be worth-while.”

Carey looked down the room. He wished that they could have talked anywhere else. It was so full of Tanis, and yet so empty. He remembered that he had loved her. And that the love was dead. And she was dead. He said abruptly,

“All right, I’ll do it.”

The evening was not one upon which Miss Silver could look back with satisfaction. The Maxwells would be leaving next day, Alistair possibly returning for the inquest on Monday. Both brothers were silent and abstracted, though Alistair no longer appeared to be on the verge of a breakdown. Petra looked pale and exhausted. Her flow of talk had gone. Laura after a valiant attempt to engage Lucy Adams in conversation gave it up, her efforts being requited by monosyllables and an air of complete inattention. But Miss Adams could, and did, engage in a discussion as to the relative merits of violas and pansies, a safe and pleasant subject introduced by Agnes Fane and maintained whilst they all partook of soup.

Whilst the fish, which was the principal course, was being served, Miss Silver began a long, trickling story which culminated in an attempt at blackmail. The narrative had very little point, but it occupied the time required for handing round the fish, an office performed by Dean in his best manner and upon the heaviest silver entrée dish. If food was hard to come by, silver was not, and what was lacking in the one should to the best of his ability be made up by the other. He went round, and Florrie Mumford followed him, handing potatoes in their jackets, sliced and fried.

“So my friend very wisely communicated with the police, which was by far the best thing to do,” said Miss Silver, concluding her tale.

Carey Desborough, on the other side of the table, obediently took his cue.

“Blackmailing is pretty heavily punished.”

“Deservedly so,” said Miss Silver. She helped herself to the fried potato, remarked that it looked very good, and pursued the original theme. “Sentences of seven, fourteen, or even twenty-one years have been given, and really when you think of the other risks which the blackmailer runs, it is surprising to find that anyone has so little sense as to embark on them. It may be an easy way of making money, but there is always the danger that the person blackmailed may either go to the police or take the law into his own hands.”

Florrie continued to hand fried potatoes without a tremor. She was a deft waitress. Miss Silver could not discern the least trace of discomposure. It might be that she was too securely wrapped up in her own conceit, or, what was just possible, that the word blackmail had no meaning for her. Miss Silver decided that this might very well be the case, and decided that she was wasting her time.

Lucy Adams said fretfully that she supposed there would be a great deal more crime after the war, and the conversation drifted by way of postwar farming back to the safer problems of gardening. The result of the experiment was exactly nil.

Retiring to her room rather earlier than usual, Miss Silver encountered Florrie going round with hot-water bottles. She came from the passage leading to the lift. Miss Fane’s room, Perry’s, Miss Adams’, Petra’s, and Laura’s had obviously been disposed of. She now carried a single bright green rubber bottle which Miss Silver recognized as her own, and she wore an extremely self-satisfied look. “Like a cat who has been at the cream,” was Miss Silver’s mental comment.

She withdrew into her own room, leaving the door ajar. Florrie knocked, was told to come in, and proceeded to turn down the bed, insert the hot-water bottle, and lay out Miss Silver’s nightdress, a garment over which she smiled and tossed her head. This impertinence, discerned by Miss Silver in the mirror, evoked a reproving frown. The garment, of cream Viyella, was in her opinion most comfortable and tasteful, being high in the neck and long in the sleeves, of a decent fullness, and very neatly finished with silk feather-stitching— very different of course from the skin-tight and transparent wisps in which the girls of the present generation attired themselves for the night.

Florrie, who considered the nightgown a “sketch,” was preparing to leave the room, when Miss Silver called her back.

“Just a moment, Florrie. And please close the door. I have something to say to you.”

For, after all, she was going to say it. To the relief of her conscience in time to come, she had made up her mind that she must speak to Florrie. Since the indirect warning had passed her by, she must be warned directly. If the warning were useless, as she fully expected, she would at least have done what she could.

Florrie stood there, fidgeting and looking pert.

“I’ve the hot-waters to put.”

There was a toss of the head which Miss Silver ignored. She said gravely,

“What I have to say to you will not take long. Your conversation with William Shepherd in the shrubbery this evening was overheard. You know, or pretend to know, something about the murder of Miss Lyle, and you are trying to use what you know to get money out of the person whom you suspect. That is what is called blackmail. You heard us talking about it at dinner. Perhaps you do not know that it is a very serious crime in the eyes of the law, and that it is always very heavily punished. Besides the punishment which the law would give you, there is the grave risk you would run. Your knowledge, if you have any, exposes you to danger. You should tell the police what you know or suspect without delay. They will protect you—and I must tell you that I think you are in need of protection. A person who has murdered once may murder again.”

As she spoke she was aware that it was to no purpose. Florrie’s face was set and defiant. She said rudely,

“I dunno what you’re talking about.”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“I think you do. I shall not say any more, but I hope you will take my warning. That is all.”

The door was jerked open. Florrie bounced out, shutting it after her with something that was very nearly a bang. Miss Silver’s warning had not disturbed her complacency, nor altered her purpose by a hair’s breadth.

“Nasty, prying, nosey old maid!” and, “A hundred pounds—a hundred pounds—a hundred pounds—” was all the burden of her thoughts. Anger, cupidity, triumph possessed her. There was no place for a warning, no place for fear.

She finished what she had to do and went to her room in the north wing. It was the smallest there, being in fact no more than a slip taken off the room next door, but it was a place of her own and a source of great satisfaction. If she had been obliged to share with Mary, the upper housemaid, she would have had to give up a number of things which she had no intention of giving up. The books which she read in bed—Mary’s hair would have curled with horror if she had known what was in them. And she’d never have been able to slip out at night and meet Bert if she hadn’t a room of her own. She giggled to herself as she thought what Bill Shepherd would say if he knew about Bert. A cut above Bill, Bert was. Butchers always made money, and his father had a fine shop in Ledlington, as well as the small branch at Prior’s Holt. A cut above Florrie herself—and that was where the hundred pounds would come in so nicely. Bert wasn’t thinking about marrying, he was just out to have his fun, but if a girl had a hundred pounds in her pocket, there was no saying but what he’d think and think again. And she was going to have a real white satin wedding dress too, and orange-blossoms, and a veil, and white kid gloves. She tossed her head and thought contemptuously about Miss Silver, who was an old maid.

She stood in her room with the light turned off and waited as she had often waited before. The back door banged. That was Mary coming in after her evening out. She would have a word with Mrs. Dean and then up to bed, and quick about it. Mary liked her sleep. There were no sounds from the rooms occupied by the evacuees. Judds and Slades, young and old, they were hearty sleepers. That was a bit of all right too.

Mary came up, Mrs. Dean came up, and now was Florrie’s time. Dean would be going his rounds, and as soon as he had finished he would come through the ground-floor door which shut off the kitchen wing and lock it behind him, then up the back stairs to the corresponding door on the upper floor and lock that too. What Florrie had to do was to nip through and be out of sight before he got there. She had done it often enough before. You could hear him on the stairs, and that was your time—out of your room, through the connecting door, and into the empty room just the other side of it, next to Miss Silver’s. If anyone saw you—well, you’d forgotten one of the hot-water bottles. It was as easy as winking, and Florrie could wink with the best. Then when you’d finished what you’d slipped out for you could sleep comfortable enough on the morning-room sofa and slip back to your room as soon as Dean unlocked the upper door, as he always did at half-past six sharp, before he had his shave.

She heard Dean on the stair and ran for it. Easy as kissing your hand. She stood in the dark, empty room and waited. Now he was locking the door. Now he was going away down the passage to the room over the kitchen which he shared with Mrs. Dean.

There was a comfortable armchair in the empty room. Florrie felt her way to it and sat down. It was dark, and she had to wait until midnight, but she wasn’t at all afraid of going to sleep. She had plenty of things to think about—a hundred things—a hundred pounds—each pound a fortune. She had no idea of the value of money. She was getting seventeen and six-pence a week, and she had to give three quarters of it to a cross-grained father of whom she went in bodily fear. She had never had a whole pound in her possession to do what she liked with. A hundred pounds meant escape from Dad—security—perhaps marriage to Bert and a rise in life. A comfortable tradesman’s wife would have a nice little villa on the outskirts of Ledlington and household help. She saw herself ordering a maid about, shopping handsomely in High Street, buying the red three-piece she had seen at Jones’s last time she was in, going out Sundays in a nice little car with Bert. Because in her dream Bert’s father was dead and Bert had come in for the shop in Ledlington. Ever so much better than the branch at Prior’s Holt. Money in the bank too— money…

She had left the door the least little crack ajar. Presently she came out of her dream. The clock in the hall was striking twelve. As her sharp ears caught the sound she slipped out of the room like a shadow, along the passage, down the big staircase, and through the hall, to the study. She had not gone more eagerly to any of her meetings with Bert. Here— now—in this room, she was to get her hundred pounds.

The light in the hall, which burned all night, saw her to the corner of the passage upon which the study opened. The door was open now, but the room was dark. So she was there first. A cold draught met her on the threshold. Someone must have left the window open. As she hesitated, the door of the morning-room opened behind her and the voice which she was expecting said, “Put on the light, Florrie. I’ve got the money for you.”

A hundred pounds! Her hand went eagerly to the switch. For a moment she stood outlined against the sudden light within the room. Then a gloved hand came up and the study poker came crashing down. She slumped forward without a cry. The person who had wielded the poker examined its work and was satisfied. The poker was laid down beside the body. A gloved left hand switched off the light. There was a faint sound of retreating footsteps. After that no sound at all. Nothing stirred in the house. A small cold wind blew in through the open window.