The Silent Pool

Chapter Nineteen

The last car having gone off down the drive, Sam Bolton followed it in the direction of the lodge. He was the under gardener and he had been helping to get the cars away. He was now about the unlawful business of courting Mary Robertson with whom he had an assignation which would have been strictly forbidden by her father if he had known anything about it. Mr Robertson was head gardener, and an autocrat. His notions of parental authority might, as Mary declared, be fifty years out of date, but she wouldn’t have dared to flout them openly, and he looked higher for her than Sam, whom he admitted to be a steady, hardworking lad but ‘withoot sae much ambeetion as ye could lay on a saxpence’. He had a distressing homily which he was only too willing to deliver as to the extent to which he himself had burned the midnight oil in the pursuit of knowledge. Sam and Mary were therefore in the habit of waiting until he had departed to the White Hart for a moderate glass and a game of darts before, with the connivance of Mrs Robertson, they snatched an hour together.

He came whistling down the drive and she slipped out of the bushes to meet him. Then arm-in-arm they went back towards the house, cut through the shrubbery by a path which came out at the bottom of the lawn, and so to the gate which led into the enclosed flower-garden. Mary had brought a torch, but they knew the way too well to need it. The place might have been made for courting couples – perhaps it had. On a warm evening there were seats beside the pool, and if it was colder there was the summer-house.

They came through the arch in the hedge and saw at their feet the faint mysterious glimmer of the cloudy sky reflected from the water of the pool. There was a light air moving and the clouds moved with it – up there in the arch of the sky and here within the round of the low stone parapet. But the circle was broken by a shadow. Mary pressed closer.

‘Sam – there’s something there!’

‘Where?’ His arm had tightened.

‘There! Oh, Sam, there’s something in the pool! There’s something – oh!’

‘Give us your torch!’

She fumbled for it, her fingers shaking on the catch, and when he took it from her and a faint beam trembled on what lay across the parapet and fallen down into the water, she screamed. The light showed a black square and a white square and an emerald stripe that crossed them. To both it was a perfectly familiar sight. Sam felt his inside turn over. The torch fell out of his hand and rolled.

‘It’s Madam! Oh, my lord!’

He made a movement and Mary clutched him.

‘Don’t you touch her! Don’t you dare to touch her! Oh, Sam!’

There was stuff in Sam Bolton. He said doggedly,

‘I’m bound to get her out of the water.’

Mary went on clutching him.

‘We’ve got to get away – we don’t want anyone to see us!’

He said, ‘We can’t do that.’

She hadn’t known how strong he was. Her hold was broken and she was pushed aside. She slipped on a patch of moss and fetched up against the wooden seat, catching at it. Her foot touched the fallen torch. She picked it up, but it had gone out. The catch clicked, but whichever way she pushed it the light was dead. The word in her own mind frightened her. She stared into the darkness for Sam. He had gone down into the pool. She could just see him there, stooping, lifting, and she could hear the water running from what he lifted and a horrid soft thud as he set it down. That was when she screamed again. She hadn’t meant to – it just happened. She screamed and she ran, with the nightmare sound of her own voice and of that dripping water in her ears.

No one had locked the front door. Sam found it open when he came running and out of breath. He had held a drowned woman in his arms and he was soaking wet. His feet squelched on the floor of the hall and left great muddy tracks. He came upon Simmons carrying a tray of drinks, and said on a gasp,

‘Madam’s dead!’

Simmons stood there, ghastly. He told Mrs Simmons afterwards that he felt as if someone had hit him over the head. He heard himself say something, but he didn’t know what it was. But he heard what Sam said,

‘Madam’s dead! She’s drowned in the pool, and she’s dead!’

His hands stopped feeling the tray, and it fell, tilting first and then going down with a crash. And that brought everyone running.

Joan Cuttle with her mouth open and her eyes popping, Mrs Geoffrey with a confusion of cries and questions, Miss Meriel, Mr Geoffrey, Mr Ninian – they were all there, and all he could say was to be careful of the broken glass, and all he could do was to point at Sam who stood and dripped in the middle of the hall with his face like tallow and his big hands shaking.

Sam said his piece all over again.

‘Madam’s dead! I found her in the pool!’

And with them all standing there struck for the moment into a paralysed silence, Adriana Ford came out on the landing above and set her foot upon the stair. The light shone down on the gleaming dark red hair, on the dress of pleated grey chiffon, on the three rows of pearls which fell from throat to waist, on the diamond flower at her shoulder.

The silence broke to the sound of an approaching car. The door stood wide as Sam had left it, and there came in Star Somers in a grey travelling coat with a little winged cap on her pale gold hair. She came running, holding out her hands, her colour high and her eyes bright.

‘Darlings, I’m back! Where’s Stella? Aren’t you surprised-’ And then she checked. She looked at Sam standing there muddy and dripping, at Simmons with the smashed glass at his feet, at all the shocked faces and staring eyes, at Adriana high on the stair above. Her colour failed. ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong? Can’t any of you speak?’

Adriana came composedly down the stairs. It was a good entrance, and she got the last ounce out of it.

‘Sam has just been telling them he has found me drowned in the pool. Geoffrey – Ninian – don’t you think you had better go back with him and find out who it is?’