Poison in the Pen

CHAPTER 28

Miss Silver walked across the Green to fetch the few things that she would need for the night. Miss Wayne displayed some incredulity.

“You are going to stay at the Manor?”

“Miss Repton would like me to do so. It has been a great shock to her.”

Miss Renie’s handkerchief dabbed sketchily at eyes and nose.

“Oh, yes indeed-and to us all. But surely a stranger-one would have thought Lady Mallett, or at any rate a friend-”

“Lady Mallett was herself a good deal distressed. Sometimes it is easier to be with a stranger whose personal feelings are not involved.”

Miss Renie sniffed and dabbed.

“I should have thought that Mettie Eccles would have stayed.”

Miss Silver gave a slight reproving cough.

“I am afraid the shock has been worse for her than for anyone, since it was she who made the dreadful discovery.”

“I offered to wait and go home with her,” said Miss Renie. “The police wished to question her, and she was obliged to stay. I was feeling the shock a good deal myself, but I was perfectly willing to remain there with her. And all she said was, ‘For God’s sake let me alone!’ Really quite profane! After that, of course, I couldn’t say any more, could I?”

Whilst Miss Silver was putting a few things into a case Joyce Rodney came in. She shut the door and sat down upon the bed.

“Oh, Miss Silver, I’m so thankful I took David away.”

Miss Silver looked up from folding a warm blue dressing-gown.

“I think you did wisely, and I am sure he is very happy with your friend in Ledlington.”

“Oh, yes, he is. I’m so thankful I was there today, and not at the Manor. It must have been dreadful.” She hesitated, and then went on. “Penny Marsh came to see me this morning. She wanted to know whether I would take Connie’s place and help her to run the school.”

“Yes, Mrs. Rodney?”

Joyce Rodney made an impatient movement.

“I do wish you would call me Joyce! Everyone does.”

Miss Silver’s reply was kind but firm.

“I have told you that I do not consider it advisable.”

“Yes, I know. All the same I wish you would. When Penny spoke to me about the school I felt as if it might be a very good plan. Of course I couldn’t go on doing so much for Aunt Renie, but I would be able to pay for my board, and she could have extra help-only with these dreadful things happening-” She broke off, looked very directly at Miss Silver, and said, “About Colonel Repton-you were there when it happened. Was it suicide? Aunt Renie says it was-but was it?”

Miss Silver laid the dressing-gown in the suitcase.

“Neither Miss Wayne nor myself is in a position to say.”

“Well, you know, everyone says that he and Scilla had had a frightful quarrel, and that she was only waiting until after Connie’s funeral to clear out. They say he was going to divorce her.”

Miss Silver said mildly, “That scarcely appears to be compatible with suicide.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? Frankly, I shouldn’t have thought anyone would kill himself because Scilla was walking out on him. Of course she’s pretty, but she doesn’t do a single thing that a man like Colonel Repton expects his wife to do-why, she doesn’t even keep house. And she’s got an odious temper.”

Miss Silver put a sponge, a nailbrush, a toothbrush, and a tube of toothpaste into a blue waterproof case which had been a last year’s Christmas gift from her niece by marriage, Dorothy Silver, who was the wife of Ethel Burkett’s brother. She said,

“Men do not take the same view of these things that we do. Mrs. Repton has the type of looks which is apt to render them indifferent to practical considerations.”

Joyce laughed.

“How right you are! And I was being thoroughly catty. I daresay she is all right against her own background, and she must have been hideously bored down here, but I do hate to see anyone take on a job and then not lift a finger to make a success of it. Look here, I’ll walk back across the Green with you and carry that case.”

It was when they were alone under the night sky with the empty Green stretching round them that Joyce Rodney said out of the middle of what had been quite a long silence,

“Miss Silver-about Colonel Repton-you never did say whether you thought it was suicide. Do you know, I don’t somehow feel as if it was. Florrie has been telling everyone that he said he was going to divorce his wife. Well, as you say, if he was going to do that he wouldn’t commit suicide, would he?”

To this bald but commonsense statement of a problem upon which she did not desire to enlarge, Miss Silver thought it best to observe in a noncommittal manner that suicide was sometimes due to a sudden impulse, and that there was not at present enough evidence to show how Colonel Repton had met with his death.

It was about this time that Valentine was saying to Jason Leigh, “He didn’t kill himself. Oh, Jason, he didn’t-he wouldn’t!” She stood in the circle of his arms and felt safe.

But outside of that charmed circle there was a world of which the foundations had been shaken. She had never known her father, and she could only remember her mother as someone very vague and shadowy who lay on a sofa, and then one day wasn’t there any more and Aunt Maggie said she had gone to heaven. But Roger had always been there, part of the established order of things. He was not at all exciting, but always a kind person round whom the house revolved. It had never occurred to her to think whether she loved him or not. Now that he was dead, it was like being in a house with one of the walls sheared off and letting in all the winds of calamity. She pressed against Jason and heard them blow, but they couldn’t touch her as long as he held her close. He said,

“I shouldn’t have thought he would either.”

“He didn’t. I am quite sure he didn’t. He talked to me about suicide once, and he said it was running away. He said he didn’t believe it got you out of anything either. It was shirking, and if you shirked you only made things harder for yourself and everyone else.”

“You had better tell that to the Chief Constable.”

“I have. He didn’t say anything. Jason, what is so frightful about it is that if he didn’t do it himself, there is only one person I can think of who would have done it.”

“Scilla? You’d better not go about saying that, darling.”

“As if I would! As if I wanted to! I’ve been trying not to say it to myself, but it keeps on coming back. There was a story I read once about a room in a house. Someone had been murdered there, and the door wouldn’t stay shut. It’s like that-about Scilla-in my mind. I try to shut it away, but the door won’t stay shut.” Her voice had gone away to just a breath against his cheek. They were so close that he couldn’t be sure whether he heard the words or just knew that she was saying them. He kept his own voice down, but it sounded too loud.

“Why should she?”

“He was going to divorce her. He told Maggie. That is why she looked so ghastly at the Work Party this afternoon-he had just been telling her. There was an affair-with Gilbert- and he had found it out.”

“Is that why you broke it off?” The words came hard and hot before he could stop them.

“No-no, it wasn’t. You’ve got to be quite sure about that, because it’s true. I didn’t know-I hadn’t any idea until that Wednesday night. When I left you and came back to the house they were in her sitting-room. I was coming in through the drawing-room window, and the door between the rooms wasn’t quite shut. I heard-something-and I oughtn’t to have listened-but I did. He was telling her it was over. He said he was-fond of me.”

“That was very kind of him.”

“It was quite horrid,” said Valentine with sudden vigour. “I came away after that. In the morning I got one of those poison-pen letters. It said Gilbert had been carrying on with Scilla. But you are never to think that that was when I made up my mind to break it off, because it wasn’t. It was quite, quite made up when I was with you in the gazebo. You told me I couldn’t marry Gilbert, and I knew I couldn’t. I knew it the way you know something that you don’t have to think about. It was just there.”

They kissed.