The Catherine Wheel

CHAPTER 31

Jeremy and Jane, returning to the Catherine-Wheel in a state of mind blissfully superior to murder, were encountered by Miss Silver as they opened the front door. She had, in fact, been listening for the sound of the car.

“Just one moment, Captain Taverner,” she said.

They stood where they were, the door still open, until Miss Silver stepped outside and shut it between them and the inn. It was then that Jane came down to earth sufficiently to realize that Miss Silver was attired for the road. She wore the black cloth coat, the elderly tippet, the black felt hat, and the woollen gloves.

Without any delay she came to the point.

“Captain Taverner, I am going to ask you a favour. Will you be so kind as to drive me in to Ledlington?”

Jeremy said, “Of course.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is very good of you. I should prefer to start immediately if it would be quite convenient. There is someone with whom I should like to have a short conversation. I think I can undertake not to keep you waiting more than twenty minutes. It might be less, but I think I can promise that it will not be more.”

Jeremy laughed.

“Jane will hold my hand!”

Miss Silver sat at the back and smiled indulgently at the two young people in front. She had, of course, been offered the seat beside the driver, but her refusal had been definite.

“I should really greatly prefer to be behind. I find the headlights disturbing.”

She sat in the dark and watched them go by. Not so very many after all. It hardly needed the sudden flashing light to inform her that Jeremy and Jane were sitting very close together, and that they were in a state of extreme happiness. Neither of them would really mind if her conversation with Mrs. Wilton were to last more than twenty minutes.

They drew up in Thread Street, with the old church of St. James looming dark at the corner. Measuring the distance to No. 6 with her eye, Miss Silver could well understand that the Wiltons need never be in doubt as to the time. As she pressed the bell, the clock in the church tower gave two chiming strokes for the half hour. Once you were accustomed to the sound it would no longer rouse you, but if you were lying awake in the night you would hardly fail to hear it.

The door was opened a little way. A dimly lighted passage appeared, and, blocking most of the view, someone very tall and broad.

“Mrs. Wilton?”

“Yes.” The voice was firm and pleasant.

Miss Silver moved so that what light there was might fall reassuringly upon her own face and figure.

“My name is Silver-Miss Maud Silver. You will not know it. I wonder if I might have a very short conversation with you.”

Mrs. Wilton hesitated.

“If it’s about a subscription-” she began.

“Oh, no-nothing of that sort, I assure you.”

The passage light enabled Mrs. Wilton to observe the smile which had won so many confidences.

“It is just that I should be very grateful if you would allow me to talk to you for a little about Albert Miller.”

For a moment the thing hung in the balance. If it hadn’t been for Miss Silver’s smile, the scales would have gone down with a bang on the wrong side and the door would have been shut. The momentary pause allowed a variety of considerations to present themselves. Mrs. Wilton had her share of curiosity, but if she had been expecting Mr. Wilton home to his tea she would not have allowed it to interrupt her preparations. But Mr. Wilton was working over-time and would not be home until eight o’clock. She wouldn’t mind a bit of a sit-down and a bit of a gossip. She opened the door and asked Miss Silver in.

The room into which she showed her smelled of furniture-polish and moth-ball. Except on occasions of state the Wiltons used their warm and comfortable kitchen. The sitting-room existed as the shrine of their respectability. It housed in unblemished splendour the suite bought thirty years ago out of Mrs. Wilton’s own earnings on the occasion of her marriage. It consisted of a sofa and two chairs-lady’s easy and gent’s ditto. The springs were intact, the bright blue plush as bright and blue as on the day when she had proudly paid the bill. Moth had been kept at bay by the cunning insertion of moth-balls in every crevice- hence the smell. The carpet, contributed by Mr. Wilton, matched the suite in colour and had been just as carefully kept. There was a white woolly mat in front of the cold hearth, where a fan of pink crinkled paper faintly simulated an absent flame. There were two blue vases on the mantelpiece, and a gilt clock which had at one time been a source of strife in an otherwise harmonious married life, Mrs. Wilton having bought it cheap at an auction because it took her fancy, and Mr. Wilton having used it as the text for a good many heavy-handed sermons when he discovered that it had no works. Everything in the room was spotlessly clean, and anything that could be polished had been polished until you could see your face in it. There were pink curtains at the bow window, and a gas-bracket with a pink glass shade on either side of the mantelpiece. At the application of a match to the nearest bracket all this colour and polish sprang into view.

Miss Silver, who shared Mrs. Wilton’s partiality for pink and blue, and had no objection to seeing them mixed, was able to exclaim with genuine admiration,

“But what a charming room! So comfortable, so tasteful!”

Mrs. Wilton swelled with pride. She would have at once detected a feigned appreciation, but this was the genuine thing. She was not one to show her feelings, but she warmed to the visitor.

They sat down, Miss Silver in the lady’s easy, and Mrs. Wilton in the gent’s ditto. Under the pink shaded gaslight she appeared as a massively built woman with a fine head of grey hair. She had on a flowered overall which allowed glimpses of a brown stuff dress. Her whole appearance was that of a person who respected herself and expected others to respect her. Miss Silver surveyed her thoughtfully. Not the woman to gossip easily, or perhaps at all. She said,

“It is very good of you to let me talk to you about Albert Miller, Mrs. Wilton.”

There was a slight perceptible stiffening.

“If it’s anything to do with his wanting the room again it isn’t a bit of good. I wouldn’t have him back, nor I wouldn’t ask my husband. We put up with it long enough-too long, if it comes to that. And I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for knowing his mother, poor thing.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Is she alive?”

Mrs. Wilton shook her head.

“Dead these ten years. She’d a bad husband that she couldn’t stand up to not yet leave like I’d have done. And ’twas for her sake I took Albert in when he come out of the army, and put up with him when by rights I shouldn’t have done. But we’ve had too much of him, Mr. Wilton and me, and we’re not taking him back. Getting too big for his boots and talking about what a lot of money he was going to have-and where it was coming from, dear knows, for he wasn’t going to keep his job the way he was carrying on, and Millers never had anything that I heard tell about.”

“He must have been a very trying lodger.”

Mrs. Wilton looked majestic.

“Coming in all hours,” she said. “And the Worse. And no thought to wipe his boots on the mat.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me! How extremely inconsiderate!”

“We’re not taking him back,” said Mrs. Wilton with gloomy finality.

Miss Silver coughed.

“No one could possibly expect you to do so. I can assure you that I am not here to question your decision. As I said before, he must have been a most trying inmate, but since you knew his mother and have spoken of her so kindly you would not wish any harm to come to him-would you?”

Mrs. Wilton bridled.

“I’m sure I’m not one to wish harm to come to anyone,” she said.

“Then I may tell you that I am seriously concerned about Albert Miller. It would help me very much if you would tell me just what happened on the Saturday night before he left you.”

For the moment there was no reply. Mrs. Wilton produced a rather portentous frown. She let the best part of a minute go by before she said,

“I’m not one to beat about the bush. I’m going to ask you right out what it’s got to do with you.”

Miss Silver smiled.

“I did not know Albert Miller, but I know some of his relations. I am concerned as to what may have happened to him. I should like to know his present whereabouts, and I should like to ask him a few questions. That is all. Now will you tell me about Saturday night?”

Mrs. Wilton said slowly,

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Then it would be soon told, and you could do no harm by telling it.”

There was another frowning pause. Then Mrs. Wilton said,

“What do you want to know?”

“I should like you to tell me just what happened from the time he came home on Saturday night till the time he left on Sunday morning.”

Mrs. Wilton pursed her lips.

“Well, there’s no harm in that, and it’s soon told, as you say. He come home just before half past eleven, and he was the worse for drink, banging on the door and singing a song about that girl Eily he’s been running after-out at the Catherine-Wheel. Never heard such a noise in my life. We were in bed, but Mr. Wilton wouldn’t go to sleep till he heard him come in. He needn’t have troubled-there was enough noise to wake the dead.”

“Did Mr. Wilton go down to let him in?”

The massive head was shaken.

“We’d left the door, but after Al got upstairs Mr. Wilton went down and locked it. We were both properly fed up, and we’d made up our minds about giving him his notice. What with him coming in like that and the noise that was going on overhead, we’d had enough. Mr. Wilton called up the stair to tell him so. And the language he got back! I had to put my fingers in my ears! Mr. Wilton come back into the room and said, ‘That’s the last of him. Says I didn’t need to give him notice, because he was getting out anyhow-and getting out of the place.’ And then he went down and locked the front door and brought away the key because Al owed us a week’s money and it wouldn’t be right to let him go off without paying it.”

Miss Silver interrupted with her slight cough.

“Would there be any light in the hall, or on the stairs?”

Mrs. Wilton pursed her lips.

“We’ve lived thirty years in this house. Mr. Wilton don’t need any light to go up and down.”

“But Albert Miller-he would not know the house so well as Mr. Wilton.”

“Uses a torch!” said Mrs. Wilton contemptuously. “Nasty flickering things-I can’t abide them!”

“Did your husband see him when he went upstairs?”

Mrs. Wilton stared.

“Saw him, and heard him-shouting about this Eily, and shining his torch into Mr. Wilton’s eyes till he was pretty near blinded!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Most inconsiderate and disagreeable.”

Mrs. Wilton achieved a magnificent toss of the head.

“And kept me awake best part of the night, bumping, and groaning, and making the bed creak.”

“Dear me!”

“And first thing in the morning down he comes and bangs on the door. Mr. Wilton calls out to him he won’t get the key till he pays up what he owes us. Al says he’s got it ready, and he won’t be coming back, and Mr. Wilton says, ‘Not much you won’t!’ So then he lights the candle and goes over to the bedroom door and opens it just enough to take the money, me being still in bed. And he counts it, and it’s all right. And Al says he’s giving the railway the sack and he’ll send for his things when he gets another job. So then Mr. Wilton gives him the key to let himself out. And that’s the last we saw of him.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“When you say saw, Mrs. Wilton-it would be quite dark in the passage?”

Mrs. Wilton nodded.

“He’d got his torch,” she said-“swinging it about like I told you. Put Mr. Wilton’s back up properly.”

“Did Mr. Wilton take the candle over to the door?”

Mrs. Wilton stared.

“He hadn’t any call to. Took the money and brought it across to me to count, and then back with the key. He’d no call to take the candle, nor to stand at the door with the draught blowing in and that nasty torch in his eyes.”