Ladies’ Bane

CHAPTER 32

Howland had gone and they were all at lunch, when Allegra turned one of her rather vague looks upon her husband and said,

“Did I tell you that Miss Falconer and her friend are coming to tea?”

Geoffrey started. His fresh colour was less in evidence than usual, and his thoughts appeared to have been wandering.

“What did you say?”

“I just wondered if I had told you that Miss Falconer and her friend are coming to tea.” Allegra rather dropped than raised her voice.

“No, I don’t think you did. I didn’t think we were having anyone just now.”

“I thought it would be nice for Ione. Miss Falconer knows so much about the house.”

“And she has had two years to tell us what she knows!” said Geoffrey Trent.

It was the first time that Ione had seen him put out about a domestic matter. Allegra’s face puckered up as if she were going to cry, and all in a moment he was his old smiling self again.

“Darling, that was horrid of me. But I’ve got a lot of letters to write, and I shall just have to run away as soon as tea is over. After all, you and Jackie and Ione ought to be enough to entertain two old ladies. By the way what is the friend’s name? I keep forgetting it.”

It was Jacqueline Delauny who said,

“It is Miss Silver-Miss Maud Silver-and she is like all the old maids in the world rolled into one.” She had a short dry laugh for this.

Geoffrey said,

“Really, Ally!”

He used what was Ione’s own special name. No reason why he shouldn’t of course, and there had to be a first time for everything, but she didn’t like it.

Allegra smiled vaguely and repeated,

“I thought it would be nice for Ione. But Jackie must stay too, because I don’t always want to talk-I get so tired.”

The two ladies arrived punctually at half past four, Miss Silver wearing her best hat with the magenta trimming and the plum-coloured cashmere dress which had been new in the autumn. Since she invariably bought the stuff and had it made up by an elderly dressmaker in Chiswick, the pattern of these garments changed very little. A bog-oak brooch in the form of a rose with an Irish pearl at the heart fastened the folds in front. Miss Falconer never varied now from her shabby black, and wore, as always, a wide-brimmed felt of a mushroom shape and a limp discouraged scarf about her neck. But the pearls which showed occasionally were real and had been her mother’s. Where so much else had gone, she held on to them, and would continue to do so until confronted by some final emergency.

Geoffrey Trent made himself perfectly charming during tea, and then vanished with the time-honoured excuse of letters to write. Whilst Allegra lapsed into one of her abstracted moods and Ione led Miss Falconer on to talk about the family history Miss Silver found herself practically tête-à-tête with Jacqueline Delauny. Her hands occupied with her knitting, she explained that the stocking on her needles was for her niece Ethel Burkett’s second boy Derek.

“There are three of them, Miss Delauny, and all at school now, so they get through their stockings very quickly indeed. I have finished three pairs for the eldest boy, Johnny, and as soon as these are done I shall be knitting a set for Roger who is the youngest.”

“Indeed?”

Miss Silver beamed upon her.

“And then I shall be able to think about a pretty knitted frock for little Josephine.”

It was not until the conversational possibilities of the Burkett family had been thoroughly explored that Miss Silver sighed and observed that she was afraid she talked too much about them.

“But when you are as fond of children as I am-I was for some time engaged in the scholastic profession-”

Miss Delauny’s lip twisted.

“It is very hard work.”

“Ah, yes, but so rewarding. I am sure you must have felt that too.”

A sudden failure of the blood beneath the skin made Miss Delauny’s lip rouge stand out with a rather ghastly emphasis. The effect was for a moment only. Then Jacqueline said with a kind of bitter composure,

“I am afraid I did not find it so.”

Miss Silver was all compunction.

“My dear Miss Delauny! I had no intention of making any reference-do, pray, believe me!”

“It doesn’t matter. Mr. Trent and I are, perhaps, too sensitive on the subject. You see, we were both very fond of Margot. But nobody seems able to believe that. They write and talk as if it was all very painful but it must of course be a great relief to us.”

Miss Silver observed that far too few people had been endowed with tact.

“Even if they thought such a thing, it is really the height of bad taste to say so.”

“Mr. Trent feels it very much.”

In spite of her remark about tact Miss Silver did not seem able to get away from the subject of Margot Trent. She asked a number of small and quite harmless questions about her tastes, her temperament, and the difficulties which attend the education of an abnormal child, the whole copiously illustrated by anecdotes from her own experience and from that of friends also engaged in the scholastic profession. If Miss Delauny had any idea of breaking away and joining the other group, it was made quite impossible for her to do so.

Ione and Miss Falconer were away in one of the half dozen centuries which had elapsed since Robert Falconer received his grant of land and built himself a house upon it.

Allegra took no part in either conversation. She sat in the sofa corner and did not pay any attention to what was going on until right at the end, when she broke in suddenly with an irrelevant,

“Ione has had such a charming flat lent to her. Her friend Louisa Blunt. She is going abroad or something, and wants to get it off her hands. Where is she going, Io?”

Thus directly addressed, Ione returned from the Middle Ages.

“I don’t think she is going anywhere, except just for a short holiday in Paris. And she isn’t lending me the flat. It is too much for her, and I am taking it over.”

“So much nicer,” said Allegra. She spoke to the company at large. “You see, she can have her own furniture and things. We were looking at materials for curtains at Kenlow’s the other day.”

Miss Falconer nodded approval.

“They have very good materials at Kenlow’s, only everything is so expensive-” She ended on a sigh.

Ione said gently,

“Yes, they are. But my friend will leave her things there for as long as I want them, so I need not get everything at once.”

There was a little more talk. About the position of the flat-“So convenient for shopping. And your sister can come up and stay with you-it will do her good.”

Allegra said brightly, “Oh, yes,” and then appeared to lose interest again. She leaned back in the sofa corner and closed her eyes. It became obvious that the tea-party might be considered to be over.

The front door was no sooner closed behind the visitors than Jacqueline Delauny swept tempestuously into the study. She shut the door with what was almost a bang and said,

“Of all things in the world I detest a prying old maid!”

Geoffrey Trent looked up with half a smile.

“My dear Jackie-how fierce!”

She flung round at him from the hearth.

“It is all very well for you-you ran away!”

It was an effort to maintain the smile. She had become a great deal too prone to make scenes. It seemed painfully probable that she was going to make one now. He found himself for the first time not altogether unsympathetic towards Ione’s demand that Jacqueline should go. You could not count on what an hysterical woman might say. What the situation demanded was the appearance of a perfectly normal household-saddened, it is true, by a recent death but at peace within itself.

“My dear Jackie, be reasonable!”

She threw up her head.

“Do you suppose that I feel reasonable?”

He did not suppose anything of the sort.

Her voice choked as she hurried on.

“For one whole hour that damned prying old cat has been grilling me! First she bored me with her relations till I could have screamed, and then she got on to Margot-Margot, oh, my God!”

There was no question of a smile between them now. He dropped his voice.

“What did she say?”

“Oh, it didn’t amount to anything. It was just one niggling question after another. Did she read-did she write? A friend of hers had been very successful with a similar case. The girl could write a passable letter, and had even made some attempts at keeping a diary! Of course I could see at once that someone had been talking-Allegra, or Florrie. And there was this inquisitive old devil all set to find out whether Margot kept a diary!”

“What did you say?”

She flung out a hand.

“What was there to say? I said she scribbled a lot of nonsense, and as often as not destroyed it. But do you think I could get that woman off the subject? She just went on, and on, and on!”

“Well, she has gone now. Sit down and have a cigarette.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“You think you can shrug everything off and smooth it down, don’t you! I tell you I don’t know what Margot may have put in those missing pages! She was in her very slyest mood that afternoon and brim full of spite! She kept looking sideways at me and laughing to herself!”

“She was writing in her diary then?”

“I told you she was! But I didn’t know she had torn the pages out! I’d never have let her go out of the room with them if I’d known!”

He said uneasily,

“Well, after all, Jackie, the most of what she wrote was only a child’s scribblings. I don’t see you need be in such a state.”

“Don’t you? I tell you she was just as full of spite as she could be! Are you prepared for those pages to turn up, and find out that she had written, ‘Geoffrey says I can take one of those old ropes from the shed and so I shall’? I can just see her sitting there, putting down things like that and hiding them for someone to find!”

There was a silence. He was staring down at his blotting-pad. In the end he said,

“Don’t you know where she used to hide things?”

“Those pages are not in any of the usual places. Do you suppose I haven’t looked? I believe they are somewhere in Ione’s room.”

“Why?”

“She had been fairly haunting it. It was her last new craze, and I believe she stumbled on some hiding-place. The trouble is I never really have a chance of getting down to looking there. I thought I would get one the day Ione and Allegra went into Wraydon. I came back as quickly as I could, and there was Florrie turning out the room!”

He bent a frank look upon her.

“But why don’t you tell Ione and ask her to help you?”

She broke into unsteady laughter.

“You damned, damned fool! Can’t you get it into your head that what Margot wrote on those missing pages may very well put a rope round your neck? Not the rope you told her she could have, but one that can be trusted to do its job!” She came up close to him and went down on her knees by his chair, catching him by the wrist, the arm. “Geoffrey-Geoffrey-can’t you see the danger you are in? They are raking up all that old business of Edgar’s again, and if they get only half a chance they’ll try and pin Margot’s death on you! They haven’t got anything on me, but they could be made to believe that they have quite a lot on you! You don’t seem to realize it, and you’ve got to! There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you-nothing! But I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself!”

He disentangled himself from her clinging hands and got up. What an unbridled lust for emotion women had! But not Allegra. She came into his mind, passing through it as she might have passed through a room, small, and pale, and cool. He went round to the farther side of the table and stood there.

“Get up, Jackie!” he said. “Get up and take a pull on yourself! You’re seeing everything through a magnifying-glass, and at least three-quarters of what you see is in your own imagination. You and I are going to quarrel if you keep trumping up this damned story about my having told Margot she could take that rope. It is utterly and wickedly untrue, and I absolutely forbid you to bring it up again!”

She got to her feet, stumbling on the edge of her skirt, catching at the table for support. When she was up, she leaned on it shaking, her eyes ablaze in an ashy face.

“You don’t”dream about her?” The words only just reached him.

He said, “No.”

“You don’t feel as if you might meet her on one of those damned staircases-closed in, the two of you?”

“Certainly not.”

She leaned a little nearer. The slightest breath-the least sound of words-

“She doesn’t come in the night and-show you-the rope?”

He drew back a step.

“My dear Jackie, I’m not an hysterical woman. You are, and I suggest that you should go up to your room and use enough cold water to steady your nerves.”

He went over to the door, opened it, and went out, leaving her standing there by the study table.