Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 15

He took a sober pace back to Melling. The feeling of fighting time and space was gone. His mind was anchored and safe. Everything on the far side of the storm that had swept him seemed a little unreal, like a dream when you have waked up with the daylight round you. It might have happened a long time ago to someone else. He had Elizabeth again. It seemed the most amazing thing that he could have let her go. He began to plan their life together as he walked.

He came out on to the edge of the Green and saw it like a soft dark smudge under the night sky. There was neither moon nor star, but after the lane with its high banks and tangled hedgerows it seemed by comparison light. He could see the row of cottages away on the far side, and the black, crouched outline of the church. He kept the left-hand path and came up with the Gate House. Light showed through the curtains. Catherine was still up.

Such a little thing can decide so much. If Catherine Welby had gone to bed a little earlier, a lot of things would have been different. The light shining through her pale brocade curtains broke Carr’s train of thought and started another. If Catherine was up, other people would be up. In a flash “other people” became James Lessiter. He could hear Rietta saying, “Mrs. Lessiter never destroyed anything. He’ll have a mass of papers to go through.”

James Lessiter would be up. He could get the whole sordid business between them finished and start fresh. He wasn’t afraid of himself any longer. He could walk in, tell the swine what he thought of him, and walk out again. It was fixed in his mind that he must do that before the whole unhappy business of his marriage could be put away. It had robbed him of every illusion, every happiness. But Marjory was dead. He had to close her account with James Lessiter. As to touching him, he would as soon touch carrion. He turned in between the tall pillars and went up the drive.

The wall-clock at the White Cottage struck its three soft notes. Rietta Cray looked up incredulously. That it should be no more than a quarter to eleven seemed to give the whole lie to time. It was an hour since Fancy had gone up to bed, a quarter over two since Carr had flung out of the house. On any ordinary evening the time would have gone too fast. She worked hard all day, but once the supper things were washed up she could step aside out of this hard post-war world and become a leisured woman, with a concert, a play, waiting for her at the turn of a switch, or a book to take her here and there in time, or anywhere in space. But this evening there were none of these things. No enchantment has power on the racked mind. She did not know when so heavy a fear had weighed her down. It was past all reason, but she could do nothing to lift it. She told herself that she would laugh at it tomorrow, and tomorrow seemed very far away.

The house was dreadfully still. She missed the old dog who had died a month before, friend and companion of fifteen years. She would have to get a puppy, but she had put off for the old dog’s sake. It was too quiet here alone at night.

Then, into the quiet, there came footsteps-not in front from the path skirting the Green, but from the back, coming up the garden. Like Catherine’s the room ran through the house, windows at either end. She heard the click of the garden gate, she heard the steps come right up to the back door and come in. She would have locked the door before she went to bed, but she hadn’t locked it yet. While she was up and about it would never have occurred to her to lock her door.

But the footsteps frightened her now. They had come down through the wood, as she herself had come an hour and a half ago. They had come down from Melling House. They were in the passage now, and the door opened. Carr came in and shut it behind him. He leaned against it and said,

“He’s dead.”

Rietta stood looking at him. His face was pale and stern- dreadfully pale, dreadfully stern. There was no wildness in his eyes. They looked at her, and she looked back, whilst everything in her froze. When she said nothing, Carr raised his voice to her as if she were deaf. He said,

“Do you hear?-James Lessiter is dead.”

She said, “No!”-not because she didn’t believe him, but because she did. It was the last hopeless protest against something too dreadful to be accepted.

His next words cut across the numb surface of her mind like a knife.

“Why did you do it?”

“Carr!”

He left the door and came forward. She saw then that he had the raincoat bundled up on his arm. It was the first moment that she had thought about it since she had dropped it across a chair in the study at Melling House. She thought of it now, and remembered that she had left it there.

Carr thrust it at her.

“What sort of a fool do you think you are to leave it there with his blood on it?”

Rietta lifted her head. It was like a nightmare-nothing made sense. But the numbness was going.

“It’s my own blood. I scratched my wrist going up through the wood.” She turned it for him to see-a scarlet line like a hair, already healing.

Carr gave an angry laugh.

“Don’t be a fool, Rietta-not with me! We’ve got to think.”

“I scratched myself-”

He shook out the coat, held up the right sleeve, and heard her gasp. The cuff was drenched and soaked. The red, wet stain ran up almost to the elbow, the breadth below it was splashed and streaked.

“You scratched your wrist-Oh, my God, talk sense!”

There was a moment when the room shook under her feet and the red stains spread in a milky mist. Then she had hold of herself again and her sight cleared.

“Carr, look at me!”

He was looking.

“And listen! I don’t know anything about this. After you went out I was afraid of what you might do. You’d had a shock. I-well, I was afraid. I took the first coat I touched and ran up the back way to Melling House. When I got there the room was hot-I dropped the coat on a chair and never thought of it again. I talked to James-in the end we quarrelled. No, it wasn’t exactly a quarrel. He said something I resented very much, and I walked out. I never thought about the coat.”

He was holding up the sleeve.

“That’s his blood.”

She said, “I did scratch my wrist-it bled. He lent me his handkerchief-I must have dropped that too.”

“What’s the good of telling me all this came from a scratch on your wrist?”

“I don’t tell you that-it didn’t. But I did catch my wrist on something in the wood. It bled quite a lot for such a little scratch.” A shudder went over her. “Not like that!” She paused for a moment, drawing hard upon her self-control. Then she came up to him. “Carr, put that dreadful thing down and tell me what’s happened. We’re talking in the dark. And for God’s sake tell me the truth, because nothing else is going to be the slightest bit of use.”

He let the coat fall down in a heap on the floor. It lay there with a broken look. But Rietta had no eyes for it. They were fixed on Carr’s hard, dark face. He said,

“Very well, I’ll tell you. When I went out of here I didn’t know what I was doing. I walked myself pretty well off my legs, because if I hadn’t I was going to go up to Melling House and smash James Lessiter. I must have walked for an hour, and I fetched up at Jonathan Moore’s. Elizabeth was there by herself. I stayed there until I’d got hold of myself. We-” his face changed-“she’s taken me back. When I came away I didn’t want to kill him any more-I just wanted to be quit of the whole thing. That’s the truth, Rietta. When I got to the Gate House Catherine’s light was on. I thought, then it wasn’t so late-Lessiter would be up-I could get quit of it all and start fresh. I wasn’t going to touch him. I was going to let him know that I knew, and I was going to tell him what I thought of him. Stupid of me, I expect, but that’s how I saw it. I went up to the house, and the front was all dark. I thought if he was up he’d be in the study, so I went round to the glass door, and found it ajar.”

Rietta took her breath quickly.

“I can’t remember-I can’t remember whether I shut it. I don’t suppose I did-I was too angry-”

He gave a sort of half laugh.

“Angry! I shouldn’t say too much about that!”

“It was about Catherine-it doesn’t matter. Carr, go on.”

“I opened the door and went in. The curtains were drawn behind it. The overhead light was on. He was lying slumped forward over the table with his head smashed in.”

“Carr!”

He nodded.

“It wasn’t pretty. It looked as if he had been sitting in his chair and had been hit from behind. The poker was lying on the hearthrug. There wasn’t any doubt about what he’d been hit with.”

She said, “Horrible!”

“Not nice to look at. Probably instantaneous. You’re not expecting me to be sorry for him, are you? If we’re not careful we may have to be uncommon sorry for ourselves.”

“Go on.”

“I had that cheering thought in the first five seconds. When I saw the raincoat it got a lot stronger. It was turned over, so a bit of the lining showed, and I thought I’d seen the stripe before. I went and had a look and found my initials on the neckband. After that I wiped the handle of the poker with a bloodstained handkerchief which seemed to have dropped on the hearth.”

She shuddered.

“He lent it to me for my wrist. You shouldn’t have wiped the handle.”

He stared at her accusingly.

“Why shouldn’t I have wiped it? If my raincoat was there, someone brought it, didn’t they? It wasn’t I. And that left you.”

“Carr!”

“It’s no use saying ‘Carr!’ If you’d had a row and hit him, it would be a hundred to one you’d rush off and never think about fingerprints. But if it was someone else, and someone clever enough to make use of my raincoat, then it was a hundred to one he’d have dealt with the handle of the poker already-anyhow that’s what I thought at the time. I wiped the handle, and I put the handkerchief on the fire, which was practically choked with ash. I don’t know if it’ll burn or not-it doesn’t really matter. Then I wiped the edge of the door with my own handkerchief, got the raincoat, and came away.”

She took another of those quick breaths.

“You ought to have rung up the police.”

He said, “I may be a fool, but I’m not a damned fool.” Then he picked up the raincoat. “We’ve got to get the blood off this. What’s the best way?”

“Cold water… Carr, I don’t like it. We ought to send for the police-we haven’t done anything wrong.”

He touched her for the first time, taking her shoulder in a bruising grip.

“You’ve got a good headpiece-use it! On the evidence, do you think you could find a dozen people who would believe I didn’t do it?”

“You?”

“Or you.”

A dazed feeling came over her. She put up her hand to her head.

“A dozen people-”

He turned at the door.

“There are twelve people on a jury, Rietta.”