Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 24

May I come in, dear?”

Mrs. Voycey, who was doing accounts, turned her head. She beheld Miss Silver attired for walking, in her second-best hat which resembled her best so closely that it would have been indistinguishable from it but for the fact of being trimmed with a band of plain petersham instead of an abundance of satin loops. In either case there was a small nosegay of flowers on the left-hand side, but the everyday bunch was smaller, older, flatter, and consisted of a tired wallflower in a pale circle of mignonette, repeating the tones of the elderly fur neck-tie much treasured for its draught-excluding qualities. The black cloth coat remained the same whether it was Sunday or weekday, and so did the neat black laced shoes and black woollen stockings which it was Miss Silver’s habit to wear from October to April, and sometimes beyond if the spring was a cold one.

Having entered and closed the door gently behind her, Miss Silver coughed. A capacious handbag depended from her wrist, and she wore black knitted gloves. She said,

“Such a terribly raw day. I hope I do not disturb you, Cecilia, but I have just received an invitation to lunch. I thought that you would have no objection to my accepting it.”

Mrs. Voycey was amiable but surprised.

“An invitation to lunch?”

“Yes, Cecilia-from Miss Cray.”

Mrs. Voycey said, “Oh-”

Since the arrival of the milkman with the first intelligence of James Lessiter’s death the village news-service had been extremely active. Mrs. Crook had “popped out” to the general shop for a packet of cake-mixture, a thing which she ordinarily despised, and had there encountered a niece of Mrs. Fallow’s who had almost, if you might put it that way, seen Mrs. Mayhew. The niece had been inspired to “step up” to Melling House with an offer of neighbourly assistance, and if she hadn’t actually seen Mrs. Mayhew, she had seen and talked to Mrs. Fallow who had only just left her.

“Can’t hardly lift her head, pore thing,” said Mrs. Crook, retailing the interview to Mrs. Voycey and her guest. “They’ve had the doctor to her, and he says it’s the shock, and Mrs. Fallow’s to stay and not to let her set her hand to anything. And from what Mrs. Fallow says there’s been enough to give her a shock-blood everywhere, and Miss Rietta Cray’s coat soaked with it up to the elbow.”

Mrs. Voycey said, “Nonsense, Bessie!”

Mrs. Crook stood her ground.

“That’s what Mrs. Fallow told her niece, and she come straight from Mrs. Mayhew that saw it. And they do say the pore gentleman left everything to Miss Cray, and the will lying there right under his hand with his blood on it. Mr. Mayhew seen it when he found the body, and he says it’s right enough someone had been trying to burn it, because it was scorched all down one side.”

“Rietta Cray wouldn’t harm a fly,” said Mrs. Voycey.

Mrs. Crook maintained an immovable front.

“Flies don’t make wills,” she said darkly. “But they do say there was maybe more in it than that. It seems Mr. Carr, he comes bursting out of the Cottage round about half past eight. Jim Warren that goes with Doris Grover, he happened to be passing, and he tells Doris that if ever he sees anyone in a passion it’s Mr. Carr. Pretty well beside himself, he says, and goes past him like anything wound up, and he hears him say Mr. Lessiter’s name swearing-like. Horrid, Jim says it was-made him think of a dog that’s got something between its teeth worrying it. Doris says he come in looking all anyhow, and she says, ‘What’s up, Jim?’ and that’s what he tells her. Always a bit soft Jim was from a child. Doris says she had to get him a nip of her father’s whisky, and Mr. Grover didn’t half carry on.”

At this point Miss Silver intervened.

“Which way was Mr. Carr Robertson going?”

Mrs. Crook stared in a contemplative manner. Miss Silver phrased her question again.

“Was Mr. Carr going in the direction of Melling House?”

Mrs. Crook considered. She took her time.

“Couldn’t have been,” she said at last-“not if Jim met him. Up from the other side, that’s the way Jim would come. First of the small cottages on the left, that’s where the Warrens live, and that’s the way Mr. Carr must have gone, because Jim says their dog run out and barked at him as he went past. But they do say it could have been Mr. Lessiter that ran off with Mr. Carr’s wife, and that maybe it all come out and Mr. Carr killed him for it.”

It was with all this in the background that Mrs. Voycey heard Miss Silver say that she was going out to lunch with Rietta Cray and said, “Oh-” It was so very unlike her to have no more than that to say that Miss Silver instinctively paused for what would come next.

An expression of lively interest overspread Mrs. Voycey’s face, and she exclaimed,

“Maud! Has she consulted you? Professionally, I mean. Oh, I do wish she would!”

“She has asked me to lunch,” said Miss Silver.

Mrs. Voycey clasped her hands. Three handsome rings which were a little too tight for her gleamed under the pressure.

“Then you must certainly go. Really, you know, it is quite providential that you should be staying here, because nothing will ever make me believe that Rietta would do anything like that. It’s really too shocking and it only shows what a dreadful thing gossip is. The breath is hardly out of that poor man’s body before everyone in the village is saying he ran away with Carr’s wife, and that Rietta murdered him because he had left her a fortune. I mean, it isn’t sensible, is it? I don’t suppose he ever set eyes on Marjory. I’m sure I only saw her half a dozen times myself, and if I ever did see a young woman whom I disliked-dreadfully pretty and not a bit of heart. And Carr was engaged to such a nice girl before he met her. Marjory simply grabbed at him and he went down like a ninepin, and that nice Elizabeth Moore went off and joined the A.T.S. I believe she commanded an anti-aircraft battery or something like that. And Marjory ran away like I told you, but I can’t see why it should have had anything to do with James Lessiter.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Perhaps, dear, I should be going-”

It took her another ten minutes to get away.

At the White Cottage she found that Miss Cray was not alone. Mrs. Welby was with her but almost immediately rose to go. Miss Silver, observing her with attention, took note of the fact that her make-up, discreet and carefully applied as it was, had as its foundation that rather ghastly pallor which no make-up can quite conceal. No one seeing Miss Silver would have supposed her to possess the eye of an expert where cosmetics were concerned, or indeed in any other direction, yet at a single glance she was aware of that underlying pallor, and of the fact that the foundation cream, the powder and the rouge with which Mrs. Welby had done her best to conceal it were the best and most expensive of their kind. They had been applied with a high degree of art, and, for a woman who had run over before lunch to see an old friend and country neighbour, Catherine Welby had taken a good deal of trouble with her clothes. Whereas Rietta Cray was in a short brown tweed skirt and an old sweater of natural wool, both very well worn, Catherine looked as if everything she had on had been most carefully chosen. There was nothing that was not suitable, but the general effect was that everything was a little too new. She might have taken part just as she was in the mannequin parade of some house which specialized in country clothes. The grey tweed coat and skirt were perfectly cut. The jumper, of a paler shade, displayed the very latest neckline, her smart brogues the very latest heel. If she was bare-headed, it was not from informality, but because it was the fashion. Not a wave of the golden hair was out of place.

Had her acquaintance with Mrs. Welby been less recent, Miss Silver would have recognized that she had somehow passed the intangible line which separates enough from too much. Even without this longer acquaintance she was aware of something of the sort. It seemed to her that there was an indefinable hardening, the failure of something which might have given life and freshness to the whole.

In the few minutes which elapsed between greeting and goodbye Miss Silver dealt with the impressions she was receiving. She was too intelligent herself not to recognize intelligence in others. She recognized it in Catherine Welby, and a quotation from an older poet than her favourite Lord Tennyson presented itself:

“Still to be neat, still to be drest,

As you were going to a feast…

Lady, it is to be presumed…

All is not sweet, all is not sound.”

There was intelligence up to a point, but to overdo an effect is not intelligent. Perhaps it was only against this background of sudden tragic death and gathering scandal that the effect appeared in this instance to be overdone. Perhaps-

Her eyes followed Catherine Welby thoughtfully as she left the room.