Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 35

Friday slipped away into the past. Before it was quite gone Randal March received a telephone call. He had the lover’s thought that it might be Rietta, and knew this at once for the folly that it was. Miss Silver’s schoolroom French came to him along the wire.

“I am sorry to disturb you, but if you could make it convenient to call here tomorrow as early as possible, I should be glad. I have had two conversations which I should like to pass on to you.”

That was all, without either greeting or farewell.

He whistled softly as he hung up the receiver. He knew his Miss Silver. When she dispensed with observance it meant quite serious business. He made a mental note to be with her by half past nine. If Melling had to see the Chief Constable’s car turn in at Mrs. Voycey’s gate, he supposed Miss Silver would have reckoned on that and considered that the game was worth the candle. He finished what writing he had to do and took his way to bed, and to the dreamless sleep which was his fortunate portion.

There were others who were not so fortunate.

Rietta Cray, lying sleepless in the dark, saw painted upon it the cold decay of hope. The glow that had been in her died, slowly but without respite. The bleak voice of common sense set out in chill, convincing terms just how much she would damage Randal’s career if she were to marry him. There are possible things and impossible things. If the impossible seems possible and you grasp at it, you are left with only your own folly to mock you. For an hour she had believed that happiness was possible. Now she watched it withdraw.

Carr Robertson slept, and dreamed a frightful dream. He stood in a dark place with a dead man at his feet. The cold hand touched him. He woke sweating.

Up at Melling House Mrs. Mayhew called out in her sleep. She had cried until she could cry no more, and then passed into a dream in which a child wailed. The child was Cyril. He was cold, he was hungry, he was hurt, and she could not go to him. She called out in her sleep with such a lamentable voice that Mayhew sat up and lit the candle. She cried out again, and turned and went back into her dream. He sat up in bed with the flame of the candle blowing and thought how cold it was, and wondered what was going to happen to them all.

Catherine Welby was awake. Like Mayhew she was sitting up in bed, but unlike Mayhew she had taken precautions against feeling cold. A small electric fire was turned on, the window was shut, and she wore a becoming quilted jacket of the same pale blue as the eiderdown. Without any makeup her skin was pale. Her fair hair was hidden by a lace cap. She had three pillows behind her, and she sat up straight against them and read-line after line, page after page, chapter after chapter. Her will drove her, but if she had been asked what she read she might have been put to it to find an answer.

The longest night comes to an end, just as the last night comes, whether we know it is the end or not. For one of these people it was the last night.

When the dull, reluctant day returned, each one of them got up and went about his business.

Catherine Welby dressed to catch the nine-forty bus into Lenton. She made herself some coffee and a couple of slices of toast. She was no longer pale, because she had taken steps to avoid anything so unbecoming. She looked very much as she always did, except that she was wearing a hat-grey, to match her suit, with a jay’s feather stuck in the band.

She came out of the front door, locking it behind her, and saw Mrs. Fallow come down the drive, hurrying and all agog with news. Catherine said good-morning, and it all came pouring out.

“It’s my morning for Miss Cray, and I expect you’ll wonder what I’m doing, but I said to Miss Rietta how I couldn’t get that poor soul Mrs. Mayhew off my mind. It’s terrible the way she’s been carrying on. Mr. Mayhew can’t get her to eat a thing. She just sits and drinks a cup of tea and cries down into it all the time. So I said to Miss Rietta, ‘I’ve got a hen laying, and I’ve brought two of the eggs along, so what about slipping up to the house and seeing she gets one whipped up in her tea?’ And Miss Rietta she says, ‘All right,’ and off I went.”

Catherine glanced at her wrist-watch. The bus stop was just beyond the gate. She had five minutes. She said,

“I should think you would have gone up the back way.”

Her voice was quite smooth and even. All the same she didn’t think Mrs. Fallow had come out of her way to tell her whether Mrs. Mayhew had taken a beaten-up egg in her tea.

Mrs. Fallow’s thin, dark face twitched with impatience. She wanted to get on with her story, not be kept pottering about.

“So I did,” she said. “And when I got up there, well, it was as much as I could do to remember what I’d come for. Such a to-do! It seems the Chief Constable come back in the afternoon, and the lady with him that’s visiting Mrs. Voycey, and they go into the study. And a piece after that Inspector Drake comes along, and the photographer chap and two more, and there’s photographs taken and plaster casts. But that Miss Silver, she’d gone by then. She’d been in the way, and I expect the Chief Constable packed her off.”

Catherine was drawing on her gloves, smoothing them carefully over the fingers.

“And what were they photographing and taking casts of?”

Mrs. Fallow came up close and said in a flesh-creeping tone,

“Footprints.”

“Footprints?” said Catherine. She stepped back.

Mrs. Fallow followed her.

“Footprints,” she said. “Right there by the study window under the lilac bushes. Seems someone must have been standing there Wednesday night about the time Mr. Lessiter was killed. And they’ve got everything photographed and measured, so they’ll be able to tell who it was. And thank heaven they can’t put it on Miss Rietta, for they say the footprints was small, and that’s something no one couldn’t say about her. Nice shaped feet she’s got, but small they’re not, and you can’t get from it. So that’s one for Miss Rietta, and one for Cyril Mayhew too. We all know he’s a bit of a weed, but fours in lady’s shoes he doesn’t take and never could. And I needn’t really have bothered about the eggs. Mrs. Mayhew’s like a different creature-that cheered up you wouldn’t know her, and had a kipper for breakfast and three pieces of toast and marmalade. So I thought I’d come along this way and give you the news if you were anywhere about. Only I mustn’t stop-Miss Rietta’s counting on me.”

They walked out between the pillars. Catherine got into the bus.