The Benevent Treasure

Chapter Eight

It was next day that Miss Silver met Mr. Puncheon in the street. He was hurrying along and had already passed her in a short-sighted manner, when he seemed suddenly to recollect himself and turned back.

‘Miss Silver – I really beg your pardon’t I have been wanting to see you – I was immersed in my thoughts. Indeed I was hoping very much to see you. I suppose you could not spare a little time? My shop is just here. I had only stepped out to post a letter – the answer to an enquiry about a somewhat rare book.’

Miss Silver’s errand not being of a pressing nature, and her own thoughts having been to some extent occupied with Mr. Puncheon’s Problem and some kindred subjects, she acquiesced in her most gracious manner and found herself presently entering a shop with a gabled front and every appearance of having been there for some hundreds of years. Inside it was dark and crowded with books from the uneven floor to the low black beams overhead. Mr. Puncheon took her through to still gloomier depths at the back, where he opened a door and disclosed quite a tidy office with a modern writing-table and some comfortable nineteenth-century chairs. After allowing her to precede him he paused on the threshold to address an elderly woman in black.

‘I shall be a little time, Ellen. Do not disturb me unless it is really important.’ After which he came in and shut the door.

A gas fire burned on the hearth. Miss Silver having seated herself, he took the opposite chair, made a small vexed sound, and remarked that he had left the fire on again.

‘And of course it is no economy if you do that. But having been always used to a coal fire, I find that I go out and leave it, and of course that annoys my sister.’

Miss Silver smiled.

‘It is not so easy to form new habits. I find the fire very pleasant. Was there something you wished to ask me, Mr. Puncheon?’

He took off his glasses and looked at her in a defenceless manner.

‘Oh, yes. I want to ask you whether you would advise and help me professionally. What you said in the train – I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.’

‘And what was it that I said, Mr. Puncheon?’

‘It was in reply to something that I said myself. We were talking about Mrs. Harbord who had worked for the Miss Benevents. I said she had told my sister that my stepson Alan never went away from Underhill. It was a strange thing to say, wasn’t it?’

‘Very strange.’

‘She kept on saying so. Ellen thought it was all nonsense. Why should the Miss Benevents say he had gone away if he hadn’t? That’s what Ellen said. But when I said it to you, Miss Silver, you said – well, you said that you thought Mrs. Harbord ought to be asked to answer that question.’

Miss Silver looked at him and said gravely and clearly,

‘Yes, I remember. I still think so, Mr. Puncheon.’

He was rubbing his glasses with a large white handkerchief. The initial embroidered across the corner did not look like professional work. It went through Miss Silver’s mind to wonder whether it had been the work of his dead wife. He said,

‘Yes – yes – that was what I was coming to. You said that she ought to be asked. And I think so too, but I really can’t bring myself to do it. The daughter-in-law was really very disagreeable – one of those boisterous women. My wife – my late wife I should say – was an extremely gentle person. I really do not feel at all able to cope. And I thought if you would perhaps accept the commission – on a professional footing – ’ He did not seem able to get any farther than that.

Miss Silver looked at him seriously. ‘You wish me to interview Mrs. Harbord?’ The word obviously startled him.

‘Well, I thought – perhaps – you would see her. And if you do not mind, I think it would be better not to say anything to my sister about it. You see, she took such a very decided line, and strife in the house is not what I’ve been accustomed to.’

A few preliminary enquiries informed Miss Silver that Mrs. Harbord, though no longer confined to her bed, was still in a very weak and melancholy way, and that the widowed daughter-in-law whose children were of school age went out to work by the day. Miss Arnold, it appeared, knew all about her.

‘Oh, yes, she goes to the Deanery. Mrs. Mayhew says she is an absolute treasure. Of course she is Chapel. How shocked dear Papa would have been at the idea of employing a dissenter, but people can’t pick and choose as they used to, and she is a marvellous worker – never stops for a moment and gets through about twice as much as anyone they have ever had. Mrs. Mayhew says she is more than worth the extra sixpence an hour she asks.’

With this and other helpful information at her disposal, Miss Silver considered that an early hour in the afternoon would be the most suitable time for a call.

The appearance of the small house in Pegler’s Row certainly bore out the character ascribed to the younger Mrs. Harbord. The front door step was whitened, the four windows, two up and two down, looked as if they had just been cleaned, and spotless curtains screened the rooms behind them from the public eye. The small brass door-knocker shone. Miss Silver used it. After an interval she heard a slow, dragging step in the passage behind the door. It opened a very little way and a tall, stooping woman came into view – at first no more of her than a poking head and a hand, but after a moment the whole bent figure in a decent black dress with a grey shawl caught about the shoulders. At the sight of Miss Silver she stepped back and said in a hollow voice,

‘If it’s for my daughter-in-law, she won’t be in till five.’

Miss Silver smiled pleasantly.

‘Oh, no, Mrs. Harbord, my visit is to yourself. But you should not be standing at the door. May I come in?’

The days are long when you are alone during most of the dragging hours. Mrs. Harbord no longer felt well enough to engage in the active household tasks with which she had been used to fill her days. By the time she had dressed herself and made shift to do her room she felt fit for nothing but to drop into a chair and mind the kitchen fire. On a good day she would get the children’s dinner, but mostly Florrie would leave everything ready, so that she only had to have it hot by the time they came home. She had never been a reader, and there were a great many hours in the day. Miss Silver would be someone from the Chapel – she had heard that the minister had an aunt coming to stay – or perhaps someone from the Ladies’ Guild. Anyhow she would be someone to talk to.

‘If you wouldn’t mind coming into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s warm in there. We’ve a nice front room, but the fire isn’t lit.’

A poor thing she might be, but she had yet to be ashamed of taking anyone into her kitchen. All nicely tidied up it was, and the children back at school. She had her chair by the fire and a footstool in front of it, and a second chair that could be pulled up for the visitor. She was glad to get back into the warm, and that was a fact. It was cold in the passage, and she felt the cold these days.

Miss Silver looked at her in a sympathetic manner and said,

‘I am afraid you are not very strong, Mrs. Harbord. You must not let me tire you. My name is Silver – Miss Maud Silver. I thought perhaps we might talk for a little. It must be lonely for you here with your daughter-in-law out all day and the children at school.’

Mrs. Harbord said,

‘Yes, it’s lonely. Only I don’t know that I could do with the children all the time – two of them, and twins. And I don’t know which of them makes the most noise, the boy or the girl. Just turned eight they are – and lively – you wouldn’t believe it.’

Miss Silver smiled in a friendly manner.

‘It sounds as if they were very strong and healthy.’

A gleam of pride appeared on Mrs. Harbord’s face.

‘Oh, they’re healthy,’ she said. ‘They take after their mother. Now my poor son, he was always ailing from a baby. Died when the twins were three months old, and what we’d have done I don’t know, only I had my health, and Florrie went out to work. My old mother was alive then, and she’d mind the babies. I don’t think I’d come to being the one to sit at home and be a burden. The doctor, he says there’s no reason why I can’t get well, but I don’t, and that’s a fact.’

‘I am sure you did not think your mother a burden when she was looking after the babies and making it possible for you and your daughter-in-law to work.’

Mrs. Harbord shook her head. Her mother had been a very decided old lady. She would have made short work of anyone who set up to consider her a burden. Even Florrie had been under her thumb.

‘She was able for more than what I am,’ she said.

Before she knew quite how it came about she found herself telling Miss Silver all about her mother. There were incidents which she had not recalled for years. Miss Silver displayed great skill in steering her past deathbeds and family illnesses to such cheerful occasions as weddings, christenings, and outings. Mrs. Wild had appeared at the twins’ christening in a bonnet with two black ostrich feathers which nobody knew she possessed.

‘Down in the bottom of her box she’d got them, and a wonder the moths hadn’t been at them. “Why mother,” I said, “wherever did you get those feathers?” And it seems my Uncle Jim brought them from South Africa when he came home after the Boer war. And just to think she’d never had them out all those years! Not when poor Father died, nor my husband, nor poor Ernie. And she tosses her head and says feathers is for joyful occasions, not for funerals, and she’s going to wear them for the twins, poor little fatherless things, and may be they’ll bring them a bit of good luck.’ She broke off to give a heavy sigh and say, ‘Oh, well, I had my health then. I could bicycle out the three miles and do a day’s work and not so much as feel tired at the end of it.’

Miss Silver said in a sympathetic voice,

‘You used to work at Underhill, did you not, with the Miss Benevents?’

Mrs. Harbord’s flow of reminiscence was arrested. She looked sideways and said,

‘I’m sure I never mentioned it.’

‘There was no reason why you should not do so.’

‘I left on account of my health.’ Mrs. Harbord’s voice shook. ‘And I was never one to talk.’

Miss Silver looked at her.

‘What would there be to talk about?’

Mrs. Harbord’s hand went up to her lips and stayed there. Her eyes shifted. She said,

‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ And then quite suddenly words came pouring out. ‘I don’t know anything – why should I? I just went there for the cleaning – there wasn’t anything for me to talk about.’

It was no use, she couldn’t go on looking away. She had to turn her eyes back again to meet Miss Silver’s. She did so, and found them very clear and kind.

‘Pray do not distress yourself, Mrs. Harbord. But when you have something on your mind, I think you know that you cannot get rid of it by pretending it is not there. I think that you have something on your mind. I think it has been there for a long time, and that it is frightening you and preventing you from getting well. You began to tell Mrs. Kean about it, did you not, but you did not go on.’

Mrs. Harbord still had that shaking hand pressed against her lips. It came down now and went out groping to the arm of the chair. She said in a startled voice,

‘Ellen Kean – did she send you? I thought – ’

‘No, she did not send me. You asked her to come and see you because you were very ill and you had something on your mind, but when she came you did not tell her very much.’

Mrs. Harbord said in a choked voice,

‘She came in – and she sat there – and she didn’t believe a word I said. She come like it was her Christian duty to come, and because I sent for her. She’d gone up in the world, and I’d gone down, but we went to school together. There isn’t much I don’t know about Ellen Kean, and her duty is what she’d always do. But when it comes to bowels and mercies, Ellen hasn’t got them, and that’s a fact. Sat there and looked at me as cold as ice and told me I was talking nonsense. So I didn’t have any more to say.’

‘That was when you told her that the stories about Alan Thompson were not true?’

Mrs. Harbord’s voice sharpened.

‘I don’t say there wasn’t plenty that might have been true. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain, and the way the young women ran after him was enough to turn anyone’s head. And not only the young ones neither, but I’m not talking about that. Only what I had on my mind and what I told Ellen Kean was gospel truth, and she hadn’t any cause to disbelieve. me. You said you didn’t come from her?’

Miss Silver made a slight negative movement of the head. Her voice, her look, her manner were having a tranquillizing effect. Mrs. Harbord’s breathing was more normal and she no longer clutched the arm of her chair. The time had come for a more open approach. She said,

‘I am not acquainted with Mrs. Kean. It is Mr. Puncheon who has asked me to come and see you. He is very much troubled at the stigma which rests upon his stepson’s name. It would be a great relief to his mind if he could know that it was not deserved. His late wife felt the whole thing very deeply. He feels that he owes it to her to do what he can to clear her son. It was said, I believe, that Alan Thompson had stolen money and a diamond brooch from the Miss Benevents before his disappearance, and what you told Mrs. Kean was that he was innocent.’

Mrs. Harbord flushed.

‘I told her, and she didn’t believe me!’

‘You told her that he had never left Underhill.’

Mrs. Harbord began to cry.

‘I didn’t ought to have said that. And I wouldn’t, only for her sitting there being so unbelieving. Because it stands to reason he must have gone. Only he didn’t take Miss Cara’s diamond brooch, for I saw it afterwards, lying there just inside the drawer of Miss Olivia’s looking-glass – one of those old-fashioned ones, up on a stand with a lot of little drawers, and she always kept the middle one locked. Only this time it wasn’t. The keys were there sticking in it, and my duster caught them and pulled it out. And there was the brooch they said he took – a kind of a spray with diamond flowers and leaves. Miss Cara wore it a lot of an evening, and for best. And there it was in Miss Olivia’s drawer, and Mr. Alan’s coin that Miss Cara gave him lying there with it.’

‘What was this coin?’

Mrs. Harbord’s voice dropped.

‘It was some kind of an old one – gold by the look of it. And it had a hole in it with a ring through it so it could be hung on a chain. He wore it like that round his neck. Miss Cara gave him the chain too. And there they were in the drawer, the two of them. Oh, ma’am – that’s what I’ve got on my mind! He’d never have left them!’

‘Why do you say that, Mrs. Harbord?’

‘Miss Cara, she told him it was a luck charm. He showed it to me one day when I was up doing his room – pulled it out of the neck of his shirt and told me all about it. Very free and open he was. “Look at what Miss Cara had given me!” he said. “Hundreds of years old and a real mascot. I’ll have good luck as long as I wear it, and I can’t be hurt by wound nor poison. Nice to know that, isn’t it, in case anyone ever had the idea of sticking a knife into me or putting something into my tea.” I said, “Mercy, Mr. Alan! Who would do that!” and he laughed and said, “Oh, you never can tell.” Well, do you know, not a month after that something broke in the car when he was driving it, and it went smash into a wall at the bottom of Hill Lane. And he come out of it without a scratch. “What did I tell you, Mrs. Harbord?” he said. “That charm of Miss Cara’s is a mascot all right. I ought to have been killed, and here I am without a scratch. You won’t catch me leaving it off in a hurry.” Which was vain superstition, but I could see that he meant it. And not a week later they were saying he had run off with goodness knows how much money and that brooch of Miss Cara’s, and I can’t say anything about the money except that it’s foolishness to keep a lot in the house – just asking for trouble to my way of thinking! But that brooch of Miss Cara’s he never took for I saw it with my own eyes in Miss Olivia’s drawer a matter of ten days after that, and the coin and the chain was there along with it like I told you. And a week later the two ladies went off abroad. And why would Mr. Alan leave that coin of his behind?’

Miss Silver said in a considering voice,

‘If he had been found out in a theft he might have been asked to give it back, and the brooch too. The Miss Benevents might not have wished to prosecute but they would certainly have required the restitution of the brooch, and if they set a special value on the coin and chain they might have required him to give that back too. It could have happened that way, Mrs. Harbord.’

‘Well then, it didn’t! Not to Miss Cara’s knowledge anyhow, for the very day before they went abroad I was coming along the passage, and there was the two of them in Mr. Alan’s room, and the door on the jar. Miss Cara was crying, and Miss Olivia was scolding her. Very harsh she spoke, and I thought it was a shame. “You ought to have more pride,” she said. “Crying for a thief and a runaway! A common thief that could steal from those that trusted him!” And Miss Cara said, “If he wanted the brooch he could have had it. I would have given him anything he wanted.” And Miss Olivia said very sharp, “Well, you gave him too much. And what did he do but put ideas into his head, and when he saw he’d gone too far he went off with what he could lay his hands on, and you can say goodbye to your brooch and to the lucky charm you set so much store by, for you’ll never see them again.” And Miss Cara cried fit to break her heart and said she wouldn’t care for anything as long as he would come back.’

‘And what did Miss Olivia say to that?’

Mrs. Harbord’s voice dropped to a solemn whisper.

‘She said, “You’ll never see him again.” ’