Poison in the Pen

CHAPTER 4

Miss Silver found herself delighted with Willow Cottage. Tilling Green was a charming little place, far enough from Ledlington not to have been spoiled but within sufficiently easy reach by bus. It had a fourteenth-century church with some interesting tombstones and brasses, the fine old Manor house, and two or three really charming half-timbered cottages. Willow Cottage was of course of a later date, which she considered preferable from the point of view of a residence. Old cottages were doubtless picturesque, but they were sadly apt to have uncomfortably steep stairs and low ceilings, to say nothing of out-of-date sanitary arrangements and a shortage of hot water. Willow Cottage had a nice little modern bathroom which, as Miss Wayne informed her, had taken the place of an early Victorian conservatory.

“We found it full of ferns when we bought the cottage- it is thirty years ago now-and it made the dining-room so damp. My sister decided immediately that it must go. She was a wonderful person, Miss Silver. She always made up her mind about things at once. The moment she saw that fernery she said that it must go. Now I am quite different. I am afraid I see so many difficulties. I said, ‘Oh, Esther!’-that was my sister’s name-and she said, ‘Well, what are you oh’ing about?’ It was very stupid of me of course, but I couldn’t help thinking how inconvenient it would be to go through the dining-room if one wanted to take a bath, but she pointed out that mealtimes would quite naturally be different from bathtimes, and that if one had a tendency to be late in the morning it would help one to overcome it. And so it actually did. I found that I was able to get up quite half an hour earlier without it being any trouble at all. It only needed a little perseverance.”

Without thinking its situation ideal, Miss Silver was in no frame of mind to cavil at it. There might so easily have been no bathroom at all, and she was delighted with her bedroom, one of the two which looked towards the front of the house and provided that view across the Green towards the Manor gates and the neighbouring church described by Frank Abbott.

Miss Wayne informed her that there was to be a wedding at the Manor within the next day or two.

“Really Tilling Green will be quite gay-a rehearsal for the wedding on Wednesday and a party at the Manor in the evening. It is giving them a great deal of work-Colonel and Mrs. Repton and his sister. It is she who really does the housekeeping-young Mrs. Repton doesn’t take much interest. Joyce and I are not invited, but as I said to her, ‘My dear, we really can’t expect it. Of course I have known them for thirty years, and you and Valentine have been friendly-and we could have got Jessie Peck in to be with David-but as we were not asked, there is no more to be said about it. You must remember that we are not relations.’ I must say I shouldn’t myself consider Mettie Eccles or Connie Brooke to be anything more than connections. My dear sister always thought it absurd to use the word relation for anyone farther away than a second cousin.”

Miss Silver checked this dissertation with a question.

“And the bride? She is a young relative of Colonel Repton’s, I think you said? You have known her for some time?”

“Oh dear me, yes-from a child-Valentine Grey. The wedding is on Thursday afternoon. Such a charming girl, and the bridegroom is so very goodlooking. Of course one didn’t quite expect-but people very seldom marry their first love, do they?”

Miss Silver turned an interested ear.

“Very seldom indeed, I should think.”

“How kind of you,” said Miss Wayne in her small earnest voice. She proceeded in a burst of confidence. “I do really mean it, because I was just thinking that perhaps it was an unkind thing to say, and one doesn’t like to feel one has been unkind.”

Miss Silver smiled.

“It is, I think, a question of fact. Characters develop and tastes change. Someone who would be congenial as a companion at seventeen or eighteen years of age might no longer be so in five or six years’ time.”

Miss Wayne continued to gaze. She was a little mousey creature with a tendency to turn pink about the eyes and nose when moved or distressed. She blinked and said,

“How well you put it. I shouldn’t like to have felt that I had been unkind. Valentine is such a charming girl, and no one has heard anything of Jason Leigh for a very long time. I asked his uncle about him the other day-he is our Vicar’s nephew, you know-and he said, ‘Oh, he never writes.’ ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Oh dear, Mr. Martin, that is very sad for you, isn’t it?’ But he said he didn’t think it was, because young men liked to be off ‘adventuring.’ Don’t you think that was a very curious word for him to use?”

Miss Silver enquired what Mr. Leigh’s profession might be.

“Oh, he writes,” said Miss Wayne vaguely. “Rather odd sort of books, I think. My niece tells me they are clever-but then if you are not clever yourself you like something simpler, don’t you think? A nice love story with a happy ending, if you know what I mean. Of course I can’t help taking an interest in dear Valentine and hoping that she will be very happy indeed. I think I told you they are having a rehearsal of the ceremony on Wednesday afternoon. Would it interest you to slip into the church and watch? I have never seen a wedding rehearsal, and there cannot be anything private about it, can there? Of course Joyce and I have been asked to the wedding, and if the Reptons see you with us on Wednesday, I expect they will ask you too. After all, one more can make very little difference-there are always some people who cannot come. I know for a fact that Janet Grant, who is a very old friend, will not be able to be there because the rather tiresome sister-in-law who is always getting ill has had one of her attacks, and that means Janet having to go all the way down into Kent. Esther used to say-my dear sister, you know-she used to say that Jessica wouldn’t get ill nearly so often if she hadn’t been allowed to count on Janet running down there every time her finger ached. But of course one mustn’t be unkind about it, and no one knows better than I do how terrible it is to be lonely. Jessica didn’t marry, you see, and she doesn’t get on with Janet’s husband, Major Grant-such a nice man, but rather a sharp temper. So it is all rather sad. Now my dear sister and I, there was never a word between us all the years we lived together. But then it is generally men who make the trouble, is it not?”

It was this identical theme which was occupying Mrs. Needham who had kept house for the Rev. Thomas Martin at the Parsonage across the Green for almost as long as he had been there himself. If he ever looked back to the days before her coming, it was with a heartfelt shudder. A wife in failing health, a succession of well-meaning but incompetent “helps,” the shock of Christina’s death and his own conviction that the failure of their marriage must somehow have been his fault and his alone-these were not things upon which any man would choose to dwell. At his darkest hour Mrs. Needham had walked in, sent undoubtedly from heaven by way of a Ledlington registry office, and she had been there ever since-large, strong, imperturbable, a good cook, an excellent housekeeper, a wonderful manager. She had, in fact, so many virtues that the absence of just one might be considered to weigh lightly in the scales. She was kind, she was clean, she was honest, she had every domestic quality, but she had a tongue which practically never stopped. There had been moments when Tommy Martin had felt that he couldn’t bear it. It was at these moments that he allowed himself to look back, and he never had to look for long. In time he developed a way of life in which she learned to play her part. When he went into the study and shut the door he was not to be disturbed. For the rest, he could bear with her and in case of need withdraw his attention to a point at which he really hardly knew whether she was talking or not.

At the moment when Miss Wayne was deprecating the trouble-making proclivities of men-in which connection she would certainly have used a capital-Mrs. Needham was enlarging upon the same topic to a visitor of her own, Mrs. Emmott, the Verger’s wife, a thin lugubrious woman whom no one had ever seen out of black. They were enjoying a nice cup of tea and some of Mrs. Needham’s featherlight scones. Mrs. Emmott had just remarked that there was no smoke without some fire, and Mrs. Needham was agreeing heartily.

“That’s just what I said, my dear. Show me a bit of trouble, and ten to one there’ll be a man somewhere behind it. Not that I’d believe anything wrong about poor Doris, for I wouldn’t, but if there wasn’t a man in it somewhere, why did she go and drown herself? Girls don’t, not except there’s a reason for it.”

“I can’t say there’s anyone ever saw her with a fellow,” said Mrs. Emmott in a resigned voice.

They had already been talking about Doris Pell for the best part of half an hour. Mrs. Needham was ready to go on to someone else. She said,

“Oh, well-” And then, “There’s more goes on than meets the eye. Now only last night-but there, perhaps I didn’t ought to say anything.”

Mrs. Emmott gazed at her.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Well, perhaps I shouldn’t. Not that it was anything really, and if I don’t tell you, you’ll go thinking all round it and about, when it was only Connie Brooke that rang up, wanting to see Mr. Martin when he was out.”

“And what’s wrong about that?”

“I didn’t say there was anything wrong, only she was crying, that’s all.”

“Maybe she’s got a cold.”

Mrs. Needham shook her head.

“There’s a difference between a girl that’s got a cold and a girl that’s been crying her eyes out. ‘Oh, is he in?’ she said, and I said, ‘Well, no, he isn’t. He’s gone over to Ledlington to one of those meetings about the Orphanage, and he said he’d stay to supper with the Reverend Craddock. Friends at College they were, and he’s ever such a nice gentleman.’ So she said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ and I could tell by her voice she was crying again. And just then who should come in but Mr. Martin himself. It seems Mr. Craddock had been called out to someone that was taken ill, so he had come home for his supper after all. I gave him the telephone and I told him who it was, and before I had time to go a step I could hear her say, ‘Oh, Tommy darling, can I come and see you? I don’t know what to do!’ You know how all these young ones call him Tommy.”

Mrs. Emmott looked down her nose.

“It didn’t ought to be allowed,” she said. And then with melancholy interest, “Did she come?”

Mrs. Needham was pouring herself another cup of tea. She nodded.

“Oh, yes, she came. And I was right about the crying- her eyes were all bulged up with it. And she didn’t go away any happier neither, for I was coming through from the kitchen with his supper-tray when they come out of the study. I stood back, as it were, and they didn’t see me. And he was saying, ‘Well, my dear, you had better think it over. I can’t tell you what you ought to do, because I don’t know what it is that you’ve got on your mind. But if it is really anything to do with those horrible letters, then I think you may have a duty.’ ”

“Well, I never! And what did she say to that?”

Mrs. Needham leaned forward in the chair which she filled with amplitude. She had a lot of strong dark hair only lightly sprinkled with grey. Her eyes were brown and soft, and she had cheeks like rosy apples. She dropped her voice and said,

“She began to cry again. I stood just where I was with the tray, and I couldn’t help but hear. Mr. Martin, he said, ‘Oh, my dear child, don’t! That handkerchief’s nothing but a rag. Here, take mine.’ And she sobbing and saying, ‘Oh, poor Doris -I don’t know what I ought to do-but once I’ve said it I can’t take it back, can I?’ And he said, ‘No, you can’t, so you’d better go back and think it over.’ And with that he’d got the door open, and if you ask me, he was glad to be rid of her. For they take advantage of him, indeed they do- coming here at all hours and never thinking whether it’s his supper-time or not!”

When they had finished their tea Mrs. Emmott went on down to the village shop, where she picked up a tin of Irish steak which her friend Mrs. Gurney had been keeping for her. They had a comfortable melancholy conversation, in the course of which Mrs. Emmott passed on what Mrs. Needham had been telling her, with some additions of her own.

Later that evening Mrs. Gurney told Jessie Peck, who was a cousin of hers, and Jessie Peck told her sister-in-law who worked Tuesdays and Thursdays for Miss Eccles and Wednesdays and Fridays for Miss Wayne. Just how many people the sister-in-law told cannot be estimated. Her name was Hilda Price, and she was a strong persevering talker. Within twenty-four hours most people in Tilling Green were aware that Connie Brooke had something on her mind. She knew who had written the anonymous letters… She knew something about the death of Doris Pell… She couldn’t make up her mind whether she ought to tell what she knew…