Ladies’ Bane

CHAPTER 14

The raindrops stopped pattering upon the pond and rushing down the windscreen. The clouds were lifting. Between them there appeared first streaks, and then a broad expanse of a pale, lovely turquoise, January’s gift to the English winter sky. Presently there was that clear shining after rain which makes amends for the wettest day.

They drove slowly back to Bleake, not talking very much but happy. Ione had a sense of release. She was ready to believe that it was the fog, the shaking she had just received, and her own sense of being lost which had given a sinister tinge to the Professor’s words. She was ready to believe anything so long as she didn’t have to see him again, or to listen to that rolling voice. It went through her mind that he had produced the story of the unknown Chinese mandarin-if by pressing a button you would cause the death of this person, and at the same time benefit three-quarters of the human race, would you, or would you not, be justified in pressing that button? And she remembered that Jim Severn had said, there in the fog, when they were huddled together on the stairs of the empty house and she was drowsing and waking against his comfortable shoulder-he had said that he felt pretty sure the button-pusher was really only interested in one member of the human race-himself.

A warm sense of security flowed between her and the recollection. She chose her friends with a sure instinct, and she always knew at once what the possibilities of that friendship were going to be. There were the people to whom you responded on the artistic, the practical, the purely personal side. There were the people with whom it was quite possible that you might fall in love, and yet at the same time there would be an inner conviction that you could not imagine spending your life with one of them. But with Jim Severn-this sense of intimacy and security. It was as if they had known each other for so long that the security was a thing tried and proved, and the intimacy a bond which could never be broken.

When they drove into the garage of the Ladies’ House-converted stabling, very roomy and spacious-Ione saw that Geoffrey’s car was out. He had said something about taking Allegra for a drive if it cleared, and she supposed that he had done so. Well, it was lovely now, with the clouds all drawn away to a rampart along the horizon and the whole sky of that magical rain-washed blue-

Jim Severn put a hand on her arm.

“Like to show me the gardens? Or is it too wet?”

She lifted a foot in a sensible country shoe for his inspection.

“It’s not the wet, but what Geoffrey will say. He’s sure to want to take you round himself.”

He laughed.

“Well, so he can. No need to tell him I’ve been round with you. It’s rather nice with everything clear and the trees dripping. Those birches look as if they had been strung with diamonds.”

They wandered down the terraces. Looking back at the house, Ione said,

“Do you know, the garden almost persuades me. Those Americans must have loved it a lot.”

“What became of them?”

“He was killed in the war, like the last male Falconer, and she went back to the States. End of a dream.”

“Yes.”

She turned to him abruptly.

“Don’t you see, the house is simply hung about with old sad stories. Allegra oughtn’t to have that kind of atmosphere. There’s the decaying family just petering out after five hundred years, and goodness knows how many crimes and horrors piling up all the way. If you are well, and happy, and strong-minded, you can take it all in your stride like Geoffrey does. But Allegra is neither well nor happy, and she certainly isn’t strong-minded. I can just see it seeping into her and getting her down.”

He said very gravely,

“You will have to say all that to Mr. Sanderson, my dear.” Ione took a moment before she said, “Yes.” She felt as if she had made a momentous decision, and that once made, she was pledged to it. A weight lifted from her spirits, colour came up in her cheeks, and she turned to him with a gaiety which surprised them both.

“I’ve been letting myself get too intense. I do when I haven’t got anyone to talk things over with. Come along and see the marvellous rock garden that the Americans made out of a disused quarry.”

She began to tell him about the trick Margot Trent had played on Geoffrey and herself the day before.

“It really was horrible. She took us in completely. And when we got to the foot of the cliff, there she was, roped to a tree near the top and laughing her head off.”

“Does she make her home permanently with your sister and brother-in-law?”

“Yes, she does. That is one of the things that worries me. She isn’t normal, and it isn’t good for Allegra, but there’s just nothing to be done about it. Schools won’t keep her, and Geoffrey seems to be the only relation she has got in the world.”

They were approaching the quarry from rather a different angle to that which she had taken with Geoffrey on the previous day. She began to point out how beautiful it would be when the aubrietia was in flower and the bare stems of the wistaria were clothed in their feathery green and the long drooping tassels of lavender and white. She had turned back to point to a clump of wanda primroses already in bloom, when she found that he had not turned with her. He was standing on a boulder above the path and staring in the direction of the cliff. Her own view blocked by a clump of rhododendrons, she had no idea of what he was looking at. She said, “Jim!” on a surprised note, and he jumped down from the rock.

“What is it?”

“There’s something lying at the foot of the quarry wall.”

“Something?”

“Someone!”

He began to run as Geoffrey had done. Ione followed him, and something said over and over in her mind, “It’s a trick-it’s a trick-it’s just another trick.” But when they came out from between the bushes and up to the place where Margot lay in a sprawling heap with a bit of frayed and broken rope in her hand, the words went faint and passed into a dreadful silence. Margot had played her last trick. She lay on the stones with a broken neck and that ragged end of rope in her hand.