Danger Point

Chapter 3

THE train slowed down to the curve by Cranfield Halt. Sometimes it stopped there, and sometimes it did not. Today it was going to stop. There were half a dozen passengers waiting in the open country platform, and four of them precipitated themselves into the carriage in which Miss Silver had hoped to continue a very interesting conversation. They pushed between her and the pale girl who had just been saying such startling things – a hearty, comely mother and three children from six to sixteen, all off to town for the day to visit their relations. The carriage became filled with their voices, their opinions, their criticisms, their anticipations. They all talked at once.

Lisle Jerningham leaned back in her corner and shut her eyes. Why had she ever gone down to Mountsford? The Cranes were not really her friends at all. She hardly knew them. They were Dale’s friends. And in the end Dale had cried off and made her go alone. Business in Birmingham – Lydia ’s money. There wasn’t very much of it now – she knew that. Lydia ’s money… She tried to stop thinking about Lydia. Mr. Crane was nice – she liked him – big, and jolly and kind. Mrs. Crane always made you feel as if you had a smut on your nose. She liked Dale – woman generally did – but she had a grudge against him for marrying. She liked men to be single and faithfully adoring. She liked a court. She was devoted to her husband, but she liked other men to be devoted to her. And Dale had broken away and married Lisle, so she didn’t like Lisle.

Dale oughtn’t to have made her go down to Mountsford alone. She ought to have refused to go – then none of this would have happened. She would never have stood with the sun on her back, and smelled the yew hedge, and heard the voices say, “A lucky accident for Dale.”

She jerked her thought away. This time yesterday she was seeing Dale off. And then shopping and lunch with Hilda. And then in the late afternoon the hot train journey down to Mountsford. She had left it as late as she could. She had even left it a little too late, because she had had to hurry over her dressing. She saw herself in her silver dress, with the emerald which had been her mother’s. Some people’s eyes would have taken a green shade from the green stone, but hers were never anything else but grey. They didn’t change. There was something in herself which didn’t change either. Even if it was all true, she couldn’t change. Even if Dale wanted her dead, she couldn’t change.

She wrenched away from that. Dinner. Marvellous food. Mr. Crane telling Scotch stories very badly and laughing at them so heartily that it didn’t seem to matter whether anyone else laughed or not. A crowd of people whom she didn’t know. A fat man who wanted her to come and see the rose garden by moonlight, and who said “All the better” when she pointed out that there wasn’t any moon. Bridge – much wearisome bridge. And at last bed. She had dreamed about Dale – Dale looking at her – Dale’s eyes laughing into hers – Dale kissing her… She mustn’t think about that-

But whatever she thought about, it came back to Dale.

This morning, lovely, with the mist rolling up off the sea, dissolving, thinning away, clearing away from the pale, bright, perfect blue of the sky, and the sun so hot on her back where she stood in the shelter of the hedge.

A lucky accident for Dale-

It was no good. It all came back to that.

In the opposite corner Miss Silver had put down her knitting and had once more opened Ethel’s magazine. She looked at the same page which had engaged her attention before. It displayed the full-length photograph of a girl in a silver gown. Underneath, in italics, the legend, “Lovely Mrs. Dale Jerningham in her loveliest frock.” All round the photograph, in lines of varying length, there meandered a gossip letter which began with an italicised “Darling”, and ended with “Yours ever” and a large question mark. Anonymity may mean that you are either too well known or not known at all. It has certain advantages, and the writer of this letter exploited them to the full. Dale Jerningham became Dale as soon as his surname had been got on record. “A lucky man, not only because he owns Tanfield Court which costs the earth to keep up, but he has married two quite rich wives – oh, not both at once of course – that would be too much luck even for lucky Dale, and he really was a widower for a surprisingly long time. His first venture was poor Lydia Burrows who was killed climbing in Switzerland umpteen years ago. The present Mrs. Dale was Lisle van Decken. And has she got plenty of the needful? Oh, boy! She’s as pretty as her picture, or even a bit prettier. Father American and dead. That’s where the cash comes from. A Scandinavian grandmother. Hence the platinum hair which looks too good to be true, but isn’t really…”

Miss Silver permitted an expression of distaste to change the set of her lips. Vulgar – very vulgar indeed. She really did not know what the press was coming to. She looked across at Lisle and saw her leaning back. Her eyes were closed, but she was not asleep. The hand in her lap was clenched upon itself, the knuckles showed bone-white. No, not asleep, only withdrawn into a desperate unhappiness.

A little later, as the train slowed, the eyes opened and met Miss Silver’s. There was a long moment before the eyelids dropped again.

Miss Silver unhasped her bag and extracted from it a neat professional card inscribed:

Miss Maud Silver

15 Montague Mansions,

West Leaham Street, S. W.

Private Investigations Undertaken.

She closed her bag again with a decisive snap as the train slid into the gloom of the terminus. A porter flung the door open. The woman with the three hearty children gathered her brood and got out. Mrs. Dale Jerningham rose to her slim height and turned to follow them.

She had reached the platform and had walked a few steps, when she became aware of a hand on her arm. The little dumpy woman to whom she had talked in the train was walking beside her. She had talked to her, but she could not remember just what she had said. She didn’t want to talk to her now. She looked down vaguely and saw that she was being offered a card. She took it and put it in her bag. The voice which reminded her of all the governesses she had ever had said kindly and distinctly,

“If you need help at any time, that is my name and address.”

The hand dropped from her arm. Without looking round she went forward to the barrier and gave up her ticket.