Ladies’ Bane

CHAPTER 24

Allegra woke quite refreshed and not at all the worse for her adventure. She was, in fact, brighter than Ione had yet seen her. They returned home by bus, which she declared to be more amusing than having a car. But when they had said goodbye to Miss Silver and were walking up the drive to the Ladies’ House she said after rather a long silence, “I don’t know whether to tell Geoffrey or not.”

Ione had a startled sensation. She said, “Why?” and found her voice a little more urgent than she had meant it to be.

“Oh, well-I don’t know-he might fuss and say that I wasn’t to be trusted to go out alone-and that would be a bore, wouldn’t it?” She had a quick sidelong look for her sister.

Ione didn’t like it. Was she still bent on getting hold of the drug which had been destroying her? She pushed the thought away vehemently. As for telling Geoffrey about that near-accident, she intended that he should know. Allegra could tell him or not just as she liked, but he was going to hear all about it from Ione Muir. There were horrible things stirring on the fringes of her mind. She meant to bring them to the test of Geoffrey’s reactions. There might be no reactions at all except the natural ones of shock and relief. If there were anything more, she thought she would not miss it. Everything in her was so tense, so much on guard, so keyed to the point of discernment, that she felt it would be impossible for her to miss even the slightest indication of what she feared.

Allegra went up to her room. Ione after a moment’s hesitation turned in the direction of the study. If she was going to talk to Geoffrey she had better do it at once.

To reach the study she had to pass the sitting-room which had been shared by Margot and Miss Delauny. The door stood open, and as she went by she was arrested by a sound from within. She could not have said quite what sound it was-an exclamation or a cry but muffled as if it came from a distance. She stepped into the room and looked about her. There was nobody there. The afternoon was a bright one, and in spite of the dark panelling there was still plenty of light. But there was certainly no one in the room. She was just about to leave it, when the second sound reached her. This time it did not resemble a cry so much as a deep and angry vibration. It seemed to come from the direction of the fireplace. A wide oak panel covered the chimney-breast, flanked on either side by much smaller panels which extended from ceiling to floor.

As Ione stood looking in the direction from which the sound had seemed to come she saw that a panel immediately to the right of the chimney-breast had started and stood an inch away from the wall. Before she did anything else she went to the door and shut it. Then she returned to the panel. It measured about eighteen inches by two feet, and it stood about five foot from the floor. It looked to be what she thought it probably was, the door of a cupboard. Pulled on, it opened like a door, and as soon as it was open the sound of voices on the other side of the wall became not only unmistakable but insistent. The wall, like all the walls of the Ladies’ House, was thick enough, but this odd cupboard, if it was a cupboard, had made use of a stone shaft which ran between the rooms, Ione had seen similar openings in the chancel of more than one old church. They were called Lepers’ Squints, and existed to enable the leper to view the Elevation of the Host without mingling with the other worshippers. For what purpose this shaft had been made she could form no idea, but there it was, closed at this end by a stout oak panel, and at the other by something which must have been a great deal thinner, since the sound of the voices was hardly impeded at all.

Staring into a dark space which appeared to be empty except for a couple of exercise-books and one or two loose sheets of paper, Ione heard Geoffrey Trent say in an agitated voice.

“No! No, Jacqueline!”

Miss Delauny’s response was one for which Ione was really unprepared. Had it been other than it was, she would, or at least she hoped that she would, have closed the panel and come away, but when she heard Jacqueline Delauny reply to Geoffrey’s “No!” with a warm and heartfelt “Oh, Geoffrey, my darling!” it was beyond her. The ugly things which she had been telling herself could not possibly be true all came a step nearer. It might be Allegra’s life that was in question, it might be her own. She leaned into the shaft and listened for what Geoffrey would say. He said, “No,” again in the tone of a man who has a woman crying in his arms and doesn’t know what to do about it. Jacqueline was certainly crying, or as near as makes no difference. She sobbed his name, and there was the sound of more than one kiss.

Il y a toujours l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue. Ione didn’t think that it was Geoffrey who was doing the kissing. She thought it was the weeping Jacqueline, and she considered that she had probably got her arms round Geoffrey’s neck. It was at any rate Geoffrey who said with a commendable approach to firmness,

“Jacqueline, you really mustn’t-you really mustn’t! Suppose anyone were to come in. Allegra and Ione may be back at any moment.”

“We should hear the taxi.” Miss Delauny’s tone was crisp, but she sounded as if she had released Geoffrey. His voice was farther off as he said,

“It won’t do, Jackie, and you know it. You can’t stay on if you are going to make these emotional scenes. You must see for yourself how dangerous they are. It only needs a whisper, a single whisper about the relations between us, and I should be sunk. If Ione thought there was anything, she would only have to go to that solicitor of hers, and I should never see a penny of Allegra’s money. I want it for the house, and if you don’t know how much I want the house, you don’t know very much about me after all.”

She seemed to have come nearer to him again. Her voice was low but perfectly distinct.

“How much do you want it, Geoffrey?”

“As much as anyone can want anything.”

She said, “As much as you want me?” and then broke into a ripple of sobbing laughter. “Oh, you need not answer that, my dear! There is always something that men want more than they want any woman. And since the men that are not like that are not worth loving at all, I shall just have to put up with it. But if you were free, Geoffrey-if you were free-would I at least come second to this house which you adore?”

“What is the good of saying that kind of thing?”

“I say it because I want to know the answer. If you were free, would you marry me, Geoffrey? Or would you put me off as you did before?”

“Jacqueline-for God’s sake!”

She laughed.

“I did you one or two good turns in the old days, but you didn’t marry me. Allegra had money, and I was getting to be an old story. But you were very much in love with me once, and you could be again. Try-and see! And I can help you. I can give you your heart’s desire-not me or any other woman, but the Ladies’ House. You won’t get it without me. I won’t tell you why, but you won’t. You may do your damnedest, but you won’t! You’ve done quite a lot already, haven’t you? Do you ever dream about Margot and that crazy rope you told her she could take? I didn’t think you would go as far as that, you know.”

“Jackie, you’re mad!”

“Oh, no, my dear. And I’m not a fool either. You told her she could take the rope, and that is that. You will have to shut Flaxman’s mouth, but nobody will ever hear about it from me. Unless you were to do something stupid like trying to send me away. I couldn’t bear that, you know. Oh, Geoffrey, I couldn’t!”

She had thrown herself into his arms again. Their voices murmured. There were kisses. For the moment at any rate Geoffrey was responding to these warm currents of emotion.

Ione stepped back from the panel and shut it. One part of her wanted to slam it hard, the other guided her fingers to a careful noiseless closing. She stood back in the middle of the room and drew a very long breath.

So this was what had been going on behind Jacqueline Delauny’s air of superiority-an old affair with Geoffrey, or perhaps not quite so old. It had sometimes been a matter of surprise to Ione that so obviously poised and competent a person should content herself with such a trying job. She thought she must have been a fool not to guess before now that Geoffrey Trent was the gilding on the pill. Standing there, she began to try to sort out what she had overheard. There was the affair with Geoffrey. If it was to be resumed, it would give Allegra grounds for leaving him. Would Allegra leave him? Even if she knew that he was unfaithful? Ione doubted it. There was the indifference following upon the drug which she had used. There was improvement in this direction, even great improvement, but she was still far from normal in her reactions. And what evidence was there? Nothing that you could take to a solicitor. Jacqueline Delauny had been flinging herself into Geoffrey’s arms, and for the greater part of the interview he had been doing his best to stop her.

Ione frowned. She couldn’t upset Allegra, and there wasn’t anything that you could really call evidence against Geoffrey. He was too good-looking, and too fond of trying to please. Jacqueline had fallen for him in a big way and carried him off his feet, as she was probably doing at the moment. The horrible thing which was now beginning to emerge from all this welter of emotion was the fact that, in love with him and alone with him, Jacqueline had not hesitated to assume that Geoffrey Trent had connived at Margot’s death. “Do you ever dream about Margot and that crazy rope you told her she could take? I didn’t think you would go as far as that, you know.” Geoffrey had certainly exclaimed in a tone of horror. He had said she must be mad. To which she replied that she wasn’t a fool, and that he had told Margot she could take the rope. Too horrible to be true? Even Jacqueline had said, “I didn’t think you would go as far as that.” Suppose he had gone as far. Suppose he was ready to go farther still. Suppose there was nothing he wouldn’t do to get the Ladies’ House-his heart’s desire. She thought, “If I had gone under that bus this afternoon, all my money would have come to Allegra.” If she had not moved just those few inches to the right, the blow which had struck Allegra would have landed fair and square between her own shoulders.

Geoffrey? Impossible! Why? Because he wouldn’t? Or because he couldn’t? What did she know about the mind of a man who had set his heart on something to such an extent that he would allow nothing and no one to stand between him and his desire? That it could not have been his hand which delivered the blow went for just nothing at all. She knew very well whose hand it was which had done that, and she remembered that she had heard The Great Prospero making his terms for the risk of his neck. “Two thousand pounds, and I’ll not do it for less.” The voice that whispered and gave him his orders had not left her with a single word to remember. It remained what it had been from the beginning, a whisper in a fog. It had no sex, no character, but it was briefing a man to take a life. It came to her now that the life was her own.