The Ivory Dagger (8 page)

I don’t know what folk are coming to, ringing up before eight in the morning!’

Emma Meadows spoke her mind with the freedom to which her long years of service entitled her. She had brought in the early cup of tea which Miss Silver considered an indulgence, and instead of waiting for it in her comfortable bed, there she was, three parts dressed and in the act of pinning on the net which controlled a neat curled fringe. The hair was mousy in colour, abundant, and with no more grey in it now than it had had for the last twenty years. Removing her new bright blue dressing-gown with the practically indestructible hand-made crochet trimming skilfully transferred from its crimson flannel predecessor, Miss Silver stood revealed in a slip petticoat of grey artificial silk and a neat white spencer whose high neck and long sleeves had also been adorned with a narrow crochet edging. She smiled benignly upon her faithful Emma, took a sip of the tea, and remarked that people could not always choose the moment when they required assistance.

Emma’s large, pleasant country face remained overcast.

‘They did ought to lern to contain themselves,’ she said. ‘At everybody’s beck and call—that’s what they think you are. And what you ought to say to them is that you need your food and rest the same as others and you don’t start work till ten o’clock.’

Miss Silver’s small neat features remained placid. This kind, solicitous service and the affection which prompted it were amongst the blessings for which she daily returned thanks to Providence. She had left school to enter what she herself called the scholastic profession with no expectation of anything but a lifetime of toil in other people’s houses, and an old age in which her exiguous savings might or might not suffice to keep her out of the workhouse. When, by a curious change of circumstances, she found herself transferred to her present profession, she did not anticipate that it would provide her with the modest comfort which she now enjoyed. Her flat, her faithful Emma, her ability to help those who were in trouble, were the subject of her daily gratitude.

She sipped her tea, smiled kindly upon Emma Meadows, and stepping to the wardrobe, selected her second best dress, a garment of sage-green wool which had been her best during the previous winter. When she had put it on she fastened the neck with her favourite brooch, a rose carved in black bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart.

‘I have someone coming to see me at half past eight, Emma,’ she said. ‘She will join me at breakfast. If there is not enough fish for two more fish-cakes, we shall have to open a tin of salmon.’

Emma said gloomily that there would be enough fish— ‘though why people can’t have their breakfasts in their own houses passes me.’

Miss Silver smiled.

‘You are very good to me, Emma,’ she said.

Half an hour later Ray Fortescue was shown into a room which in other circumstances would have amused her very much. The walls were covered with a bright flowery paper and a number of pictures in old-fashioned frames of yellow maple. The pictures were all reproductions of the more famous works of the great Victorian artists—The Huguenots; Hope, drooping over her darkened world; The Black Brunswicker; The Stag at Bay. Oddly shaped but very comfortable chairs with carved walnut frames, bow legs, and spreading laps. Curtains of the bright shade formerly known as peacock-blue. Upholstery of the same material. And a new carpet with a blue ground and wreaths of flowers which had cost so much that Miss Silver’s conscience was not always quite at ease about it. Yet what was she to do? The old blue carpet, nursed through the war, patched and darned in the post-war years, had actually become unsafe. Signs of complete disintegration had appeared—Emma had caught her foot in a hole and had just escaped a heavy fall. Carpets were a wicked price, but the affair of the Urtingham pearls had proved very remunerative. So she told her conscience to be sensible and put her hand in her pocket. Even now, before breakfast and coming into the room with a client, she could not help thinking how well it looked. So cosy, and the colours blended in such a pleasing manner.

A small fire had been lighted on the hearth. As Ray took the curly chair on one side of it and watched Miss Silver settle herself on the other, she was wondering what Sybil Dryden imagined this mousy little person was going to be able to do to help Lila and Bill and all of them. She might have stepped out of any of those photographic groups which cluttered up the family albums of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. And in every case you would have picked her out as the governess. Ray’s eyes strayed from the bog-oak brooch to the black woollen stockings and the rather shabby slippers with the beaded toes. But Lady Dryden usually knew what she was doing. You didn’t always like it, but you could see why she did it.

She had sent her to Miss Silver. She had said that she was fond of young people. This certainly seemed to be true. Lifting her eyes from the beaded slippers, Ray realized that the room was full of photographs of young men and women, young mothers and babies. Some of the photographs were getting old, but nearly all the people in them were young. And they were all over the place—on the mantelpiece, on the bookshelves, on a couple of small tables. Everywhere in fact except on the big plain writing-table.

Her eyes came back again to Miss Silver’s face. The small capable hands were engaged with some soft knitting. She was being looked at in the firm encouraging way which had induced so many clients to open their hearts.

‘What can I do for you, Miss Fortescue?’

‘Lady Dryden sent me.’

‘Yes, you told me that.’

‘Something dreadful has happened.’

In spite of herself her voice shook. She had meant to be quite terribly controlled and businesslike, and her wretched voice had gone back on her right at the start.

Miss Silver said, ‘Yes, my dear?’ very kindly indeed, and Ray bit her lip and burst into tears.

She hadn’t been so ashamed of herself for years. Angry too. The anger helped. She dabbed fiercely at her eyes with her glove—because you never can find a handkerchief when you want one. And then Miss Silver was offering her a neat folded square and saying,

‘Pray do not mind about crying. It is sometimes a great relief.’

Ray stopped wanting to cry. She said,

‘No—no—there isn’t time—I’ve got to tell you.’

It wasn’t crying that was going to be a relief, it was telling Miss Silver. She couldn’t get it out fast enough.

‘We’re in dreadful trouble. Lila Dryden is my cousin—our mothers were sisters. Sir John Dryden adopted her. He was only a very distant relation, and Lady Dryden isn’t a relation at all.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘She is a cousin of Lady Urtingham’s. I have met her there.’

Ray went on.

‘Sir John was a dear. He died four years ago. Lila is lovely. Miss Silver, I’ve got to make you understand about Lila. She’s lovely and she’s sweet, but she just can’t stand up for herself. She can no more say no when Lady Dryden says yes than she can fly up to the moon. She is afraid of people when they are angry and she can’t stand up to them—she just does what they want her to do.’

Miss Silver’s needles clicked. She remarked that Lady Dryden had a commanding manner.

Ray nodded emphatically.

‘She takes a lot of standing up to. Lila can’t do it. You’ve got to understand that—she can’t.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘There has been some special instance in which she has failed to do so?’

Ray nodded again.

‘Lila and I went down to stay with a great-aunt. She is an old pet. I’ve been there a lot, but it was Lila’s first visit. Bill Waring is a nephew of her husband’s—on the other side of the family, you know. I’ve known him always, but he hadn’t seen Lila before. He just fell down flat, and they got engaged. That was about four months ago.’ She paused, and added, “Lady Dryden wasn’t at all pleased.’

Miss Silver looked across the pale pink vest she was knitting for her niece Ethel Burkett’s little Josephine.

‘Was Mr. Waring not in a position to marry?’

Ray’s colour came up brightly.

‘They wouldn’t have had a great deal. But he is in a very good firm, and they think a lot of him. He has had one or two things patented. That is what he went out to America about.’

Miss Silver observed,

‘A most interesting country. Is Mr. Waring out there now?’

‘No, he has just come back. I wanted Lila to go and meet him, but she wouldn’t. I had to do it. I had to tell him that Lila was going to marry Sir Herbert Whitall in a week’s time.’

Miss Silver said, ‘Dear me!’

She gazed mildly at Ray, and drew her own conclusions from the colour in her cheeks and the brightness of her eyes. A very definite and touching interest in Mr. Waring. Warm feelings and a generous heart. A candid nature, ill adapted to concealment of any kind. She said,

‘Pray continue.’

‘He had had an accident—he had been in hospital—Lila didn’t get his letters. Lady Dryden always said it wasn’t an engagement. She never meant to let Lila marry him. Sir Herbert was a very good match—lots of money, and a beautiful old place which he has bought and done up. I was away—I’m just between jobs at the moment. There wasn’t anyone to stiffen Lila up, and before she knew where she was Lady Dryden had her trying on her wedding-dress and about three hundred people asked to the wedding.’

The needles clicked rather sharply.

‘And Sir Herbert Whitall was satisfied?’

Ray looked at her with a kind of stern anger in her face.

‘He liked it. He was that kind of man—if he could get something away from somebody else he would think a lot more of it. He collected things—ivories—frightfully old and rare. He wasn’t in love with Lila. He just wanted to collect her, and if he could snatch her away from Bill, that made it more exciting.’

‘He knew of her engagement?’

‘It wasn’t given out, but he knew all right.’

‘Miss Fortescue, you are speaking of Sir Herbert Whitall in the past tense. Has anything happened to him?’

Ray’s hands took hold of one another. She had taken off her gloves. The knuckles stood up white.

‘Yes—yes—that’s why I’ve come to you. They were all down at Vineyards, Sir Herbert, and Lady Dryden and Lila. And Bill went down to get Lila away. He went down yesterday. I tried to stop him, but he would go. I did try to stop him. And he rang me up in the middle of the night to say that Herbert Whitall had been murdered. He was stabbed with an ivory dagger. And they think Lila did it—or Bill.’ Her voice caught in an anguished gasp and went on again—‘Or Bill.’

Well, she had burned her boats, and she didn’t care. Miss Silver must be blind, deaf, and idiotic if she didn’t tumble to the fact that Bill Waring was the centre of things as far as Ray Fortescue was concerned, and she wasn’t reckoning on Miss Silver being anything of the kind. By just what imperceptible degree she was passing, or had passed, from wondering why Lady Dryden had sent her on such an apparently futile errand to an almost desperate anxiety that Miss Silver should be induced to come down to Vineyards, she could not have said. The originals of all those photographs smiling from their old-fashioned frames could have told her that they too had travelled the same way.

Ray sat there and wondered at herself. She had cried in front of a woman whom she had never seen before. She had as good as told her she was in love with Bill. And she didn’t care. She had no idea why, but she didn’t care. It might have been the gentle ordinariness of Miss Silver’s manner, with its domestic background and its effect of taking the most surprising things for granted. It might have been the touch of fireside authority carrying her right away back to nursery days. It might have been the pink knitting. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She went on telling Miss Silver everything she knew. It gave her the most extraordinary sense of relief. When she had finished she felt weak, and empty, and quiet.

Miss Silver coughed in a very kind manner and said briskly,

‘And now, my dear, we will have some breakfast. Emma will have it ready for us. Fish-cakes—and do you prefer tea or coffee?’

‘Oh, Miss Silver, I couldn’t!’

Miss Silver was putting the knitting away in a flowered chintz bag. She said with great firmness.

‘Indeed you can, my dear. And you will feel a great deal better when you have had something to eat. Emotion is extremely exhausting, and Emma makes very nice fish-cakes. And perhaps you would like to wash your face.’

Ray washed her face, and it made her feel a good deal better. She also ate a fish-cake and some toast and drank an excellent cup of coffee. The horrible things which she had been on the point of accepting lost some of their substance and became incredible again. Someone in Alice through the Looking-glass had said she could believe two impossible things before breakfast. Or was it three—she couldn’t remember. What she did feel perfectly sure about was that it was much easier to believe any number of impossible things before breakfast than afterwards. There didn’t seem to be nearly so much room for them when you had had a fish-cake, and toast, and coffee.

Miss Silver was coming to Vineyards. She said a beautiful piece straight out of a book about not coming down to prove that anyone was innocent or that anyone was guilty, but just to discover the truth and serve the ends of justice. And then she looked up trains, and went away to pack a bag, and told Ray to ring up Lady Dryden.

It was rather horrid to get a policeman at the other end of the line. Ray had to go on saying, ‘Please, may I speak to Lady Dryden?’ for quite a long time before anything happened. The policeman went away, and the telephone bill totted up, but in the end Lady Dryden was produced. She sounded so exactly like herself that Ray felt it had been worth waiting for.

‘Twelve-thirty at Emsworth? My dear, do speak up! It is twelve-thirty?… And she is coming? None of you young people speak into the mouthpiece… She is?… I will arrange for you to be met. Now, Ray, don’t go away! I want you to listen. There will be the inquest, and the funeral, and Lila must have some black. I am all right, because I came down in a black coat and skirt and my fur coat, but she had nothing. I am ringing up the flat, and Robbins will have a suit-case all ready for you to bring down. There is the black coat and skirt from Mirabelle, only do make sure that Robbins has put in the white crêpe-de-chine blouse and not the shell-pink. And the black wool dress with high neck and long sleeves. It will do for afternoon or evening. I don’t suppose we shall dress, but one can’t sit about in a coat and skirt all day. Oh, and the black suede shoes. Robbins is so dreadfully apt to lose her head——I think that is all. I can get her some black gloves in Emsworth. Now are you sure you have got all that? Coat and skirt—white crêpe-de-chine blouse—black woollen dress—shoes. Oh, and of course a hat. There is a small black tricorne of mine which would do. Don’t let Robbins give you the velvet one. It’s not suitable.’

Ray hung up, and admired. She didn’t like Sybil Dryden, but she admired efficiency. Lady Dryden was certainly efficient. She was organizing Lila’s appearance at the inquest and funeral of her bridegroom in exactly the same way as she had organized the arrangements for her wedding. Ray had sometimes wondered whether Lila really would go through with the marriage. She wondered still more whether it would be possible to get her through an inquest and a funeral. But if it was humanly possible, Lady Dryden would do it, and make sure that Lila presented a properly bereaved appearance.

Miss Silver was efficient too. Her bag was packed, and a taxi procured, Lady Dryden’s suit-case collected from a tearful and rather incoherent Robbins, and the train to Emsworth caught with five minutes to spare. As it left the station, Ray felt as if she was leaving the comfortable everyday things she knew behind her and being carried into a strange intolerable dream where all values were different and all the rules were mad. In no other state could Lila and Bill be cast as suspects in a murder case.

The carriage was full of pleasant ordinary people. The train chugged on like any ordinary train. Miss Silver produced her pale pink knitting, carefully done up in a white silk handkerchief. She and Ray had corner seats. She sat there knitting rapidly in the Continental manner, her hands held low, her eyes quite free to watch the passing landscape or the faces of her fellow travellers. She wore a black cloth coat of many years’; service and an aged tippet of yellow fur. The beaded slippers had been exchanged for strong laced shoes. Detective Inspector Frank Abbot of Scotland Yard, whom she not infrequently reproves for extravagance of speech, has been known to declare that Miss Silver has only one hat, and that it is fifteen years old if it is a day. This is not the case. She has always possessed at least two hats, a straw for summer and a felt for winter wear. In fact, she usually has two of each, since at stated intervals a new one is acquired and its predecessor relegated to second-best. All these hats are black and of an invariable shape, though there are seasonal variations in the shape of ribbon bows and little bunches of flowers. It had a meek black ribbon bow on one side and a tight bunch of pansies and mignonette on the other. The bow was clamped to the hat by a jet buckle. The pansies were transfixed by a dangerous-looking steel hatpin. Nothing could have been more consoling commonplace. Nobody could have looked less like a private detective. The train chugged on.